CRT tangent from political meme thread and Cis tangent from Musk thread

So much so that every four years we use a presidential election system designed to appease slave holders.

More than one thing can be true.

For example, Australia could have been founded by rapists and systematically destroyed its aboriginal population, enslaving them along the way, yet ended up being a liberal democracy even though technically the Queen can still remove your government at will.

Washington didn't have much influence on the creation of the Constitution or declaration of independence, and while he was a slave owner he also refused an effort to make him a monarch and intentionally limited his term of service because he believed no man should have inordinate power over the system they built. He also recognized the issue with slavery and freed his slaves upon his death. This in 1801 - 36 years before the British Commonwealth freed most of their slaves. Slavery in India went on, and was 4 times the size of US slavery in 1837, with at least 10 million enslaved Indians.

The Founders were important to the revival of democratic republican tradition in the world. The fact they were imperfect along with every other group in the world at the time does not diminish that. No person in the 18th century comes close to modern liberal concepts - they all were at the very least sexist, homophobic, and racist. But without their steps closer to better systems we wouldn't have gotten as far as we have. Even if we, in turn, are imperfect.

None of which means they failed to live up to their goals. They lived up exactly to the goals they actually thought were worthy of pursuing.

Not all of them owned slaves, but you conveniently leave that out every time you bring this up.

Do I? Can you show me where? If anything I try to emphasize that fact when it's relevant, because a bunch of people try to use the "well by the standards of their time..." line to defend slave owners as not being evil.

Thanks for pointing it out in this case that there were abolitionists at the time, and many voices saying that slavery was evil. Those defending and perpetuating it weren't absent mindedly failing to live up to their ideals, they were actively choosing the path of evil.

You DO understand that most parents agree with those type of statements right?

Absolutely. However I also understand that most parents would probably have no issue with the kids of racists being told that racists are wrong.

#NotAllFoundingFathers

@Bailey, I'm not going to lie and attempt to preserve the purity of the term 'founding fathers", but just to clarify ..., the northern states, or rather, the New England and middle colonies (Pennsylvania and north) did want it in the constitution to eliminate and make it part of the United States to outlaw slavery of any kind as it goes against the idea that all men are equal as well as just completely throwing the whole "invisible hand of capitalism" out the fucking window. However, the 5 southern states adamantly refused to give up slavery and were more than willing to side with England in the Revolutionary War. In fact, the southern states didn't want to revolt at all, they had no issues with the taxes to pay to George because they made plenty of money off the backs of their slaves.

This was a compromise. Allow the southern states to continue slavery and address the issue later, so that they would join in the fight for independence.

The problem wasn't the compromise, the problem was that they waited another 80 years and a war to address it; then allowed the confederates to be named "blameless" and the government is still allowing white supremacists to run rampant over the constitution, commit countless domestic terror attacks, and even hold high ranking government appointments.

To @Demiurge's point, that the founding fathers intended to address the issue "later", history shows that may have been misleading to the American people as well - or another lie told in history books. History shows, they never intended to address the issue at all. They were all dead by the time of the civil war.

At least a dozen of them were members of Abolitionist societies in their lifetimes, including Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, Morris, Sherman, and Lafayette.

The difference in viewpoint from the Founders time to the Civil War went from slavery was a 'moral depravity' and 'hideous blot on the nation' and the one threat to the survival of the nation(Jefferson), 'my only unavoidable subject of regret (Washington), and 'the most oppressive dominance ever exercised by man over other man' (Madison), to 'the foundation of our Republic (Stephens), 'the greatest of all blessings bestowed by kind providence (Hammond), and 'a positive good' whereby 'Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually' (Calhoun).

Yeah, absolutely not all Founders.

I am getting a bit tired of people who think they have some basis of historical understanding because they've read the latest outrage dejour in their siloed information space.

History is far broader than that. Once upon a time, nuance and breadth of understanding was considered a necessary requirement to be an informed liberal.

They weren't willing to impoverish their families but understood the evil of the practice and virtually all of them freed their slaves upon their passing. What's more, others, including previous slaveholders like Franklin and possibly Hamilton actively founded and promoted abolitionist societies. And they absolutely limited the spread of slavery and ensured the end of the importation of slaves. They also were dealing with some men who actively promoted slavery in the South but were necessary to the integrity of the nation. Slavery in the North was abolished before slavery in the British Empire was. Again, there were more slaves in India than there ever were in the United States. All the colonial powers of Europe had stains like this on their hands, and the only thing that separated them from other major nations was their technological prowess and therefore their measure of dominance.

meanwhile, in the Canadas,

Yep, Canada has a very good record on slavery.

Of course, Massachussets had abolished all slavery in the state 10 years earlier in 1783.

Gradual abolition started in Vermont and Pennsylvania by 1780, Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784, the Northwest Ordinance banned slavery in all the territories in 1787.

The Slave Trade act banned US ships from carrying slaves in 1794, as well as no longer allowing foreign ships to export slaves from the States. It became a crime to work on a foreign owned ship that traded slaves in 1800.

Slavery wasn't a uniform thing in the US, and the North's record on it is actually pretty good as well.

But it became the mainstay of Southern agriculture and skilled slaves replaced industry there, so it took a massive war to free the slaves and man who led that war was assassinated for advocating for black suffrage.

This is straight up virtue signaling. I’m sorry, but we’re not in a pissing contest over who freed slaves first. There’s not a place on earth where slavery didn’t exist and no one country or culture is innocent except maybe Bhudists. I’m tired of America taking all of the blame for all evils hoisted upon modern society.

I think the discussion was focused on whether slavery was viewed as wrong around the time of the founding or the US. (E.g. whether we are just imposing our 21st century morals versus whether slavery was actually considered immoral at the time).

It does appear that many contemporaries saw the immorality of slavery by way of those examples.

Gonna copy/paste this from Jan since it seems we’ve come back around:

I wonder how many will teach the full history of the DoI, including the below section of Jefferson’s rough draft.

Why did he write it? Why was it removed? How many folks here have ever read it before and if they haven’t why?

Think any of those discussions will be allowed under all these “anti-CRT” laws @Uncle Albert and @Federal Farmer want forced on teachers.

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/declara/ruffdrft.html

YoU CaN’T JuDgE ThE FoUnDiNg fAtHeRs bY ToDaY’S StAnDaRdS. tHeY DiDn’t kNoW SlAvErY WaS WrOnG BaCk tHeN.

Not to mention that while Jefferson was writing the above he was also raping his half-aunt (that he owned).

Think they’ll teach that?

You just THINK that's happening.

We're not saying the US has all the blame for slavery.

We're pointing out it's the only nation that had the fucking nerve to declare "all men are created equal" whilst literally treating others as less than such.

Because left to your own devices, American jingoism ignores that little fact, and many more besides.

Despite your "nobody is saying you can't teach the racism exists in America!!" lie upthread/elsewhere/up your butt, you have folk in government and commentators in the media saying that you can't teach that America was founded on the evil of slavery or kids won't love their country.

White kids, of course. They don't give a shit if black kids love America or not.

Created equally and treated equally are two different concepts.

"Three-Fifths" wasn't.

You can’t judge them by today’s standards not because they didn’t know slavery was bad but because the abolitionist movement was in its infancy at the time and wasn’t as popular and widespread as it was by the 1850s.

why the hell wouldn't we judge them by today's standards?

how else would we have even gotten this far without questioning the limits of their ethics?

Do you understand what a compromise is? Northern states didn’t want to count slaves at all and this was for representation and taxation purposes, they didn’t literally believe black people were 3/5 of a person.

Here's the problem right here.

Take a step back.

No one is blaming you specifically.

You are not "America" as a whole.

The people and the government allowed atrocities to happen. Period. It did. Stop acting like a child caught with the hand in the cookie jar. It's not about you.

Yes, every other country is also comprised of humans and have done horrific things.

That does not mean America can sit back and say "we didn't start it, so we're not cleaning up".

Clean up your shit. Then ask others if they need help cleaning up their shit.

Righties- You can't judge them by today's standards.

Also righties- Now let's look back to the founder's standards when it comes to "originalism".

Also, Thomas Paine was vehemently anti-slavery, and Glenn Beck tried to co-opt the fuck out of him even though he likely would have hated Glenn Beck.
So, Paine is good enough to try to ret-con into a Republican, but not good enough to damn his contemporaries on slavery?

Ask others if they need help cleaning up THEIR shit? Absolutely not.

You ask too much.
Righties, FF's type especially, are very Borg-Drone-y.

dude, you're too busy shitting on everyone trying to clean it up.

I wouldn’t for example say something like not only did they not free slaves, they also didn’t legalize interracial marriage and gay marriage, so on and so on. Society was very different back then and I wouldn’t even expect them to even consider something like that back then. Yes the understood slavery was bad and failed to abolish it in a peaceful, timely manner despite their best efforts, but I wouldn’t expect them to be exactly like us.

We are cleaning up our shit, but the left is never satisfied and always want progress faster than society and reality will allow. Then they blame America and white men for everything under the sun.