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See the BuzzFlash December 25, 2007, editorial to learn about the DVD "Amazing Grace."

Excerpt from the December 25, 2007, BuzzFlash Editorial about "Amazing Grace" and its current relevance:

As the inspiring historic film "Amazing Grace" details, the slave trade was a highly lucrative enterprise for the British Empire. As an American colony, Africans were captured, transported and sold for free labor (after their initial "cost" was paid) in the British colonies and elsewhere. As Steven Spielberg's "Amistad" so wrenchingly showed -- and "Amazing Grace" discusses -- many of the men, women and children transported in the most horrendous of circumstances died in route and were sometimes even thrown overboard alive. It is estimated that perhaps half the "cargo" died while being "shipped" to their point of sale.

And then when they arrived in the British West Indies or America, they were often mercilessly treated, punished or killed at the whim of the owner. Human life was treated as property, after all. It was, as "Amazing Grace" reveals by focusing on the British parliamentary battle over the slave trade, about "business."

One man was at the center of the British abolitionist movement -- although others stood with him -- a British MP named William Wilberforce.

During an era of upheaval in England -- the American and French Revolutions -- Wilberforce led a Quixotic effort to end British trafficking in slaves. But he is crushed for many years by the all too familiar reality that more than 300 Members of Parliament were "in the pocket" -- as one political figure in the film notes -- of the various individuals and trading companies who profited from trafficking in human lives.

In short, Wilberforce was up against what is akin today to the combined power of the tobacco lobby, the defense industry, the credit card companies, and the NRA. There was a fortune to be made in selling people, and for years Wilberforce and a band of truly Christian clerics labored to get Parliament to outlaw the enormous British industry that profited from slavery.

In "Amazing Grace," we see the appalling role that financial gain plays on public policy. And it is not just the personal enrichment of politicians; it is more importantly the perception that a nation's "glory" depends upon an industry -- in this case slavery and its economic impact within a significant part of the British Empire.

As one supporter of the English slave trade declares in Parliament, "This great ship of state must not be sunk by a wave of good intentions."

Yes, there is some minor poetic license taken with some historical figures and timing, but this is a Masterpiece Theater style of British drama that is true to the spirit and larger historical-biographical story.

Also, worthy of note is that this is about one man's battle within the context of the British parliamentary system to outlaw the slave trade in Britain. It is not a polemic about slavery, as such. It does, as we note, however, bring to the forefront at what cost does a nation enrich itself on a practice that is morally repugnant and violates a basic code of humanity?

In short, how can a nation like Britain in the late 1700s have considered itself civilized when it financially profited from such a barbaric practice?

And what of America's war for oil to ensure our maintenance as the "World's Sole Superpower" and our personal comfort?


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