By Kelly John Walker | FreedomTalk Magazine, September, 2026, pages 2–3
For 250 years, the United States of America has offered an answer to people fleeing persecution, seeking a fresh start or yearning for unfettered opportunity. Even those brought here in chains—most notably enslaved Africans—or transported under harsh systems of indentured servitude—like the Irish—found advocates who fought and even died to end slavery in the Anglosphere.
Yet slavery did not disappear with American emancipation. It persisted in parts of Africa and the Muslim world long after the United States abolished it—and it continues today. An estimated 8.7 million people across Africa and the predominantly Muslim Arab states remain trapped in forced labor, debt bondage, forced marriage, domestic servitude, sex trafficking and hereditary slavery. The highest prevalence rates occur in Eritrea, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, South Sudan, Jordan and Syria, while Nigeria has the region’s largest estimated total—1.6 million victims. China adds another estimated 5.77 million, including Uyghurs subjected to state-imposed forced labor and women and children exploited through forced marriage and sex trafficking.
Marxism’s deliberate distortion of history and relentless demonization of our national identity have helped drive political persecution to levels once unthinkable in America itself. Constitutional protections are routinely pushed aside by politicians, prosecutors and judges who place “progressive” ideology above justice. It should shock every American that our nation has locked up thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience—and that the atrocity continues. Americans increasingly find themselves beneath the searchlight of an emerging police state—while predatory organizations, hostile foreign powers and incompatible ideologies infiltrate, supplant and ultimately destroy the nation that once served as the world’s foremost beacon of liberty. America has long welcomed the world’s persecuted and offered them asylum. But where can Americans go when their own government becomes the persecutor? Open border policy deliberately created unprecedented opportunities for cartels, traffickers and foreign adversaries—including from these modern enslaving nations—to exploit a vast new population of vulnerable people. And they would enslave us if we let them.
“That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with a pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must not look only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren….Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck, and to provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities….We must delight in each other; make other’s conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God’s sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are a going.” -John Winthrop 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity
George Washington, 1788: “I had always hoped that this land might become a safe and agreeable asylum to the virtuous and persecuted part of mankind.”
Donald Trump, 2017: “America remains a beacon of liberty and hope around the world.”
Ronald Reagan, 1989: “As a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.”
Kelly John Walker is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of FreedomTalk: The Journal of Truth & Virtue, and a nationally recognized communications and creative strategy consultant. His writing has appeared in The Washington Times, The Epoch Times, Gateway Pundit, Andrew Magazine, Newsmax, Townhall, and other national outlets. A frequent commentator and guest on leading conservative programs, Walker is known for his work in journalism, strategic communications, branding, advertising, and public affairs. He also holds degrees in English and Theology and a Master of Science degree.
