The new year opened with a portentous natural gas war between Russia and Ukraine, with Western Europe playing the role of hostage. Next came the West Virginia mine tragedy. Sidebars to that story noted that the price of coal has doubled in recent years, making it profitable for companies to pursue coal seams that are difficult – and dangerous – to access. The local paper this morning carried an ad from a credit union: “Ask about our Fuel Assistance Loan!” Meanwhile, I found myself in a dank and dirty public restroom, considering the connection between the abolition of slavery and clean indoor toilets.

Western democracies formally abolished slavery in the 19th century. Most did so by consensus, the United States fought a war with itself to get the job done. Other nations – Brazil, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia – were slower to abolish slavery, at least nominal slavery. Peonage, debt bondage and sharecropping (“slavery lite”), along with repressive laws aimed at specific racial or ethnic groups, survive.

High school, even university, history classes teach us slavery’s abolition was an outgrowth of the progress of human civilization. We tell ourselves our moral standards evolved to the point that we had to legally acknowledge the universality of the human condition.

I don’t believe it, not for a minute.
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People have been unhappy with government for many years. Some two thousand years ago “there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that the world should be taxed.” Bet that was welcome news.

This year, House Speaker Dennis Hastert boldly stood up for his right to call the evergreen on the lawn a “Christmas,” rather than a “holiday” tree, because we’re a Christian nation and won’t be forced to bend to the secular humanists. If we’re a “Christian nation” and if I understand correctly what that Christ fellow said, then why did it take Mr. Hastert and company so long to pass a ban on torture?

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, George and Laura Bush committed the faux pas of the social season by sending out “holiday,” rather than “Christmas,” cards. The week after that scandal broke, it was revealed (to many fewer grassroots complaints) that Mr. Bush authorized the secret police to wiretap citizens four years ago. Unfortunately for him, he was bugging PETA and Greenpeace instead of the Southern Baptist Convention or he might have know what to write on his cards.
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It’s time, beyond time really, for America to confront the issue of slavery reparations. It’s an issue that rarely emerges in the national discussion and when it does, it’s the source of enormous controversy. It should not be controversial; an egregious injury was inflicted on Africans, later African-Americans, on this continent. That injury, which in some forms continues today, has never been redressed. The consequences of our failure of atonement spread globally.

Reparations should be made by the federal government and by state governments, in proportion to their participation in and benefit from the practice of slavery. Reparations should also be made by those immortal entities that have all the rights of citizens – corporations that profited from slavery. The banks FleetBoston, JP Morgan Chase and Wachovia have recently been called on to make slavery reparations, as have the CSX railroad and the Aetna insurance company.

Why make reparations? Why not? Corporation fortunes founded or increased through slavery still exist. Governments and corporations in Europe are being called on for reparations if they profited from Holocaust slave labor; the federal government made reparations in the 1980s to Japanese-Americans who were interned during the Second World War. Why should the sin of slavery go unatoned merely because the profiteers enjoyed a hundred-year respite?
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Thanksgiving is a past tense holiday; present tense at best. It’s not about the future, except as a subject for meditation. We can today reflect on what we’ve done with what we’ve been given and how we might use those gifts to shape our future. A worthy exercise for any last Thursday in November, it is perhaps more apt this year than ever before.

In this space six and a half years ago, I wrote about the Congressional testimony of Albert Bartlett, physics professor emeritus at the University of Colorado. In April 1999, Dr. Bartlett told Congress he expected world oil production to peak in 2005.

The idea of “peak oil” is attributed to M. King Hubbert, who worked for Shell Oil. In 1956, Mr. Hubbert predicted U.S. oil production would “peak” between 1968 and 1972. Other geologists laughed; oilmen laughed harder. They stopped laughing in 1970, when U.S. production peaked, smack dab in the middle of Mr. Hubbert’s prediction.

Ken Deffeyes, as a young man, worked at Shell with Mr. Hubbert. He went on to teach geology at Princeton. On National Public Radio on August 25, 2004, Mr. Deffeyes said he expected global oil production to peak on Thanksgiving 2005 with “an uncertainty of only about three or four weeks on either side.”
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