Political & Elections

Winchester:  libertarian ideas were radical and liberal in the classical sense, and in the sense of seeking rational change and a break with tradition, for the 1780's.  No government had been set up on such principles before.   Jefferson distrusted the federalists and the moneyed  northeastern elites enriched and empowered by Hamilton's national bank and the scheme to buy back war bonds from speculators who bought them for pennies on the dollar from veterans, widows, etc.  The Jefferonians ridiculed the federalists for their British aristocratic pretensions, and feared their suspected efforts to establish a northern federalist aristocracy.  However, Jefferson only succeeded in changing elites, not in achieving greater equality. 

The trust in a small national government was lost during the civil war where only a strong national government could save the union, and only a national government could eradicate slavery since the southern states would not give it up otherwise.   Lincoln gave rise to the truly powerful federal government that could and would imposes its will on the states to preserve the union, and to abolish slavery.

The libertarian basis of the union that favored a small and relatively weak federal government could not have saved the union or abolished slavery.  The Constitution was amended to increased democratic participation and taxation.  The Constitution has changed with the tmes through amendments.  The founder's views were applicable to their time, not necessarily all time.  Many of their views have proven to be woefully anachronistic.  What was radical and progressive then seems old-fashioned and conservative by today's standards.  They were liberals for their times, not for these times.  The point of view, however, was liberal, not conservative.

As for racism at the founding, that is simply undeniable.  Factually, most people viewed blacks as inferior or subhuman.   Some did not believe they should be enslaved, but very few believed in equality.  Most of the world was intolerant of other races, religions, etc., so that should be no surprise.  Many of the leaders were better than most men of their era, but that does not mean that they were not racists, and that racism was not embedded in the oritinal constitution.  We have been amending the flaws out of the document ever since. 

There are many things that I am wiling to debate. This isn't one of them.

I often hear an interesting perspective and have been known to change my viewpoint on current events - and even history.

History is seen with a different lens, based on who is examining it.  I have had history professors with clear biases and ones that offered the subject and allowed us to examine the facts and come to our own conclusions.  Generally, we as humans will interpret historical facts and context based on our own biases. It's hard to avoid.

If I were growing up on the Ivory Coast reading American history, I would likely have a different viewpoint than if I were a Ph.D. reading Amerian history.  Both perspectives may be legitimate, and both may even have a valid and accurate interpretation based on what they know.

What do we know?  With many historical "facts", it's hard to understand context.  We simply may not have enough information to make an informed judgement.

For example, like many men (and women) on the Presidential campaign trail, they all make promises.  Some are easy to keep, some not so much.  They have valiant ideas about what they will do "if elected."  Then they see the job - warts and all - and realize that it's much, much more complicated and convoluted.  They might have to sacrifice their principles and even do things that are not part of their ideology to get the job done.  It's just fact.  The way we analyze each Presidency is based on what we know. But what about the stuff that we, as the American Public, don't know?  What regimes would we topple if we took one path, as opposed to another?  What catastrophic avalanche would happen if we opted to intervene militarily, or if we decided to stay in our own backyard and sit on our hands? 

There was horse trading going on in that Constitutional Convention.  It's remarkable that there was even a document to come out of this brief time during our nation's infancy.  Compromise was the name of the game.

You can call it racism if you want and this is the "reason" why the Constitution wasn't more forcefully anti-slavery.  That would be wrong, though.  It's far too simplistic and misses the point.  

The point of the document was about nation building and creating a democratic process for those "persons" (not white men and women), but humans.  

These men opted to allow this Constitution to be changed to suit the needs of the persons of the USA.  Did they think it would be an end all, be all?  No way.  It was complicated enough just getting the Constitution written. 

-- Edited by SamuraiLandshark on Wednesday 13th of April 2011 09:54:40 PM

And speaking of things that took a long time to develop, the American Revolution is an example. According to John Adams it happened gradually, in the hearts and minds of the founding generation over the course of the 15 years leading up to the outbreak of hostilities with England.

But in a way, it was actually long before that, because Americans had been living free, governing themselves by virtue of England's salutory neglect, for generations, setting the stage for the events that started in 1760.

Here are some excerpts from John Adams "hearts and minds" letter which he wrote in in 1818. While you read this (IF you read this (not that you’re lazy, just that I know I’ve posted a lot of stuff here)) take note of Adams’ recommendation for how to ”investigate and perpetuate to posterity” the ideas of the Revolution. This will be important later.
( http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/adams_john_american_revolution.html ):


But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. While the king, and all in authority under him, were believed to govern in justice and mercy, according to the laws and constitution derived to them from the God of nature and transmitted to them by their ancestors, they thought themselves bound to pray for the king and queen and all the royal family, and all in authority under them, as ministers ordained of God for their good; but when they saw those powers renouncing all the principles of authority, and bent upon the destruction of all the securities of their lives, liberties, and properties, they thought it their duty to pray for the continental congress and all the thirteen State congresses.

There might be, and there were others who thought less about religion and conscience, but had certain habitual sentiments of allegiance and loyalty derived from their education; but believing allegiance and protection to be reciprocal, when protection was withdrawn, they thought allegiance was dissolved.

Another alteration was common to all. The people of America had been educated in an habitual affection for England, as their mother country; and while they thought her a kind and tender parent, (erroneously enough, however, for she never was such a mother,) no affection could be more sincere. But when they found her a cruel beldam, willing like Lady Macbeth, to "dash their brains out," it is no wonder if their filial affections ceased, and were changed into indignation and horror.

This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

By what means this great and important alteration in the religious, moral, political, and social character of the people of thirteen colonies, all distinct, unconnected, and independent of each other, was begun, pursued, and accomplished, it is surely interesting to humanity to investigate, and perpetuate to posterity.

To this end, it is greatly to be desired, that young men of letters in all the States, especially in the thirteen original States, would undertake the laborious, but certainly interesting and amusing task, of searching and collecting all the records, pamphlets, newspapers, and even handbills, which in any way contributed to change the temper and views of the people, and compose them into an independent nation.

It was not until after the annihilation of the French dominion in America that any British ministry had dared to gratify their own wishes, and the desire of the nation, by projecting a formal plan for raising a national revenue from America, by parliamentary taxation. The first great manifestation of this design was by the order to carry into strict executions those acts of parliament, which were well known by the appellation of the acts of trade, which had lain a dead letter, unexecuted for half a century, and some of them, I believe, for nearly a whole one.

This produced, in 1760 and 1761, an awakening and a revival of American principles and feelings, with an enthusiasm which went on increasing till, in 1775, it burst out in open violence, hostility, and fury.

I mistook Winchester's argument about the founder's law regarding territories as a reference to the Constitution, took his word for it, and didn't look it up. That was a later statute, not some section of the Constitution that slipped my mind. Again, Winchester's penchant for slip sliding away in his arguments.

You still have it wrong. There was a lot of horse trading behind the scenes at the Constitutional Convention. The concession made by the slaveholding states over the Northwest Territories was part of the horse trading even though it did not end up as a “section of the Constitution.”

This is the problem. Your understanding of the founders, the Constitution, and America’s founding principles is based on only bits and pieces of the whole picture. And when you stumble through one of the resulting holes in your own grasp of the big picture you blame me for “slip sliding.”

You misconstrue the nature of this conversation. SamuraiLandshark and I are trying to fill in the holes in your understanding*, and you’re responding as if this is some sort of a debate.

It’s not. The debate is over. It ended in the summer of 1787. Even though SL is patiently and generously engaging with you, the fact of the matter is the things we are describing are not theories or viewpoints or interpretations; they are what happened.

And what’s more, the bits and pieces you do know just happen to conveniently fit today’s politically correct 20th Century Zinnian/Beardian revision of history as common-man-as-victim-of-powerful-oppressors and founders-as-hypocrites.

(Gee I wonder how that happened? Could it have anything do to with the monopolistic stranglehold liberalism has on American academia from kindergarten through college? Nah. Pure coincidence.)

On the topic of the supposed slavery-supporting nature of the Constitution the author you “cribbed” from doesn’t even get it. I looked him up. He’s a professor at Yale. (I wonder how much of “God and Man at Yale” is still true.) He has written several books, one of which is “America's Constitution: A Biography,” which appears to be highly regarded. It is not currently in my library, but maybe it should be. One of the Amazon customer reviews says “the Electoral College distributed votes according to population, which included the 3/5 slave population, and gave the south a greater proportion of voting power than free white voters would otherwise have had.” Sounds a lot like what you said.

The chairman of political science at Radford University, Matthew J. Frank, reviewed Amar’s book thusly:

Amar’s second argument, not so persuasively made, is that the Constitution’s framing was “slavocratic” as well as democratic, that it created, and could have been foreseen to create, “perverse structures of permanent power” for the institution of slavery. Here is one of Amar’s rare debates in the text with another scholar, in this case the late historian Don Fehrenbacher, and it is not a debate that Amar wins. The essential problem is that he blurs the boundary between intention and outcome. Was it foreseeable to the Framers that slavery would become more, not less, entwined with the South’s sense of itself over the next three score and fourteen years? Did they anticipate that some slave states would emulate the three-fifths clause’s skewing of congressional representation in the redesign of their own legislatures, thus entrenching slavery’s power at the base of the democratic pyramid? Could the Framers have expected that America’s territorial expansion would fail to shrink the relative strength of the slaveholding region, but instead maintain its strength for generations? Amar shows that all of these things happened, but he cannot show — because it cannot be shown — that the founding generation expected them to be the results of their words and deeds, or even that they reasonably should have expected them. Perhaps they trusted too much to words to conquer deeds. But as a reproach to arguments such as Amar’s, we may adduce the bold and accurate claim of Frederick Douglass in 1852: “Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.”

In other words Amar tries to prove your point but fails. If a Constitutional Scholar from Yale can’t prove that the Constitution was “slavocratic” then it can’t be proved; because it wasn’t.

*SL, I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, speak on your behalf, or mischaracterize your intent. I apologize if I have done that. Maybe you do consider this to be a debate. Nonetheless, the historical references you mention and link to really do depict what actually happened, and it is from that perspective that I made this comment.

True, Bogney.

So what, indeed.  Basically all quotes can be taken out of context.  It is also true that the interpretation of history is often taken out of context.  In this context, I would have to disagree with you.  I have provided the entire link and in it, that particular snippet was not taken out of context, but part of a broader interpretation of Douglass' opinion on the matter. 

Many of the founding fathers did want slavery to end.  This is fact.  It may be appalling to you that they chose not to be more forceful in demonstrating their disgust for this practice.  I find it appalling, as well.  But times have changed and unfortunately men have enslaved men (and women, and children) for nearly as long as humans have had civilization.  Our country chose to put language into the document that wanted to end this importation of slaves into this county and put a time line on it's end.  It may be the law of unintended consequences that the practice of slavery didn't end for another nearly 70 years.  If only they could have had the foresight to see why what they said wasn't enough to stop slavery.

But what would have happened if a country on the verge of it's infancy, if instead of uniting into one country, there would have been two countries?  There were some compelling reasons to want to own slaves for those landowners who needed people to work the land.  Then again, my family was from the north and no, they didn't own slaves.  

A civil war was fought over this issue nearly 100 years after the country's founding, and it nearly tore the country asunder, brother against brother.  It was an ugly war that killed far too many men.  

As I said, compromise is not always easy.  Our elected representatives in 2011 don't have any easier time compromising, and it's over issues that are often far sillier and less important.  I would also venture to say they aren't quite as intellectually bright as those who founded our country.  They are also far, far less quotable.  ;)

I guess I ask, why quote anyone?  Why even study history, since there is no way to fully comprehend it? Why do we debate these issues since we can never have full understanding of them within the broader context of history?  

Fortunately for us, we have the luxury to debate what was meant in the Constitution, written all those years ago.  It was considered a vibrant document that could be modified as time went on.  And it has.  Some parts of the Constitution I would have liked to have been amended long before it was.  Unfortunately, sometimes progress moves at a snail's pace.  

Compromises on this point may seem regrettable.  Doubtful if this union would have stood without making them, in not only my opinion but in the opinion of many historians and armchair historians.  

But certainly your mileage may vary.  That is the nice thing about a subjective discipline such as history.  

-- Edited by SamuraiLandshark on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 08:58:17 PM

This seems a bit like glass half full or glass half empty.  You are impressed by parts of the Constitution that constrained the expansion of slavery in the future.  I am disappointed by parts of the Constitution that permitted it at all, and then made the practice impossible to be ride of where it already existed.

While I appreciate Howard Zinn, my source is Akhil Reed Amar, and in particular his book, America's Constitution: a Biography.  I do not understand your criticsim of the 3/5ths clause position that I stated, cribbed from Mr. Amar.  We can agree that they "had" to do it because of pro-slavery forces that needed to be included for a United States.  That shows the power of pro-slavery founders in forcing compromise that favored slavery in the existing states.  Where is the "mistatement?

The high population of slaves in the slave holding states diminshed the need for a slave trade with foreign countries.  Slaves were bred and sold at auction in slave states.  Stemming the foreign slave trade meant very little, espcially since other European powers (Britain at least) had been moving against it and slave states no longer needed it.  Indeed, the 3/5ths clause gave slave states a political incentive to increase the numbers of slaves for political clout in the new government.

As I said, there is no British constitution; i.e., a document drafted to set up the powers and limits of government.  I do not see where we are in disagreement about that tangential point.

As for random quotes from Frederick Douglas, again, so what?  He was a great and brilliant man, but not everything he said was either correct or interpreted or quoted correctly or in context.  That fact that he may have considered the Constitution anti-slavery does not negate the clear pro-slavery language therein.

You are correct that I was wrong about the Constution not having any anti-slavery provisions.  My rhetoric got away from the facts.  However, you have no answer for the 3/5ths clause other than to say it was a devils bargain forced by circumstances.  What were those circumstances?  Among them were unrepentent advocates of chattel slavery, or those doing their bidding who would prevent the formation of a new federal government without Constitutional protection for slavery.

Those who opposed slavery lost the argument in the Philadelphia convention.  The Constitution did not have provisions that would have provided an end to slavery at any definite future point, or that would bring about an end to slavery even gradually.  The state of the union before the civil war amply proves that point.  Slavery did not wither away.  It became ingrained in the laws and culture of the southern states that promoted it, and it took a brutal civil war and Constitutional Amendments to end the practice.  Of course, those Amendments were not enforced, necessitating the actions in the 1950's and 1960's leading to the Civil Rights Act.

Finally, liberal in the classical sense, that is respecting the political power of the individual, was liberal in sense of rational change from conservative tradition back in Locke's day and the time of the revolution.  Monarchical power was the conservative political position of the day combined with a state sponsored church.  Americans did not merely limit the power of a monarch, they overthrew his power completely.  The conservative position of those times would have favored the monarchy / aristocracy.  Fortunately, today,s conservatives have at least caught up to the liberals of the 1700s. 

 

-- Edited by Bogney on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 08:17:26 PM

And by the way, Frederick Douglass said the same thing about the Constitution that I've been saying:

The very eloquent lecturer at the City Hall doubtless felt some embarrassment from the fact that he had literally to give the Constitution a pro-slavery interpretation; because upon its face it of itself conveys no such meaning, but a very opposite meaning.

(emphasis in original)

And too much Keynes.

Which is ultimately the root cause of the financial crisis America and the world finds itself in at the moment.

If we'd stuck with Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Frederic Bastiat, Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, and their ilk we’d never have been in this mess in the first place.

Instead we suffer the consequences of what happens when the abstract "reason" (sic) of liberalism wins out over the reality-based combination of reason and experience of conservatism.






-- Edited by winchester on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 12:12:06 PM

It was a resounding victory in favor of slavery in the United States due to the three fifths clause. Counting slaves as three fifths of a person for congressional representation gave southern states a representative advantage in favor of slavery.

Another misstatement.

Think about it. What are the alternatives?

1) NO representation of slaves and the slave states withdraw from the Union.
2) TOTAL representation of slaves and the slave states have even MORE power through additional representation in congress.
3) Something in between, which preserves the union yet diminishes the power of the slave states to force slaver on the anti-slave states.

Obviously, given that Union was the first priority, the only viable option was the third one. And so the only question that remains is what the proportions will be. They ended up with 3/5.

Could one side or the other have gotten a better bargain? Maybe. We'll never know. They all did the best they thought they could at the time.

And the fact remains that Bailyn statement that your position inverts the proportions of what actually happened is factually correct.

The fact remains that those opposed to slavery compromised whatever scruples some of them had against slavery, and clearly many of them - especially from the south - had no scruples against slavery, out of political necessity. You see a victory in limiting the expansion of slavery in terrirtories that were not yet part of the U.S. I see a defeat in protecting slavery in those states that ratified the Constitution.

Again, you misread the historian. By doing so you clearly miss his entire point, you misrepresent what actually happened, and your position starts to sound more and more like "Don't bother me with the facts I've already made up my mind."

Frederick Douglass was a brilliant orator and had a different opinion on the adoption of the Constitution with regards to the slavery issue.  For the whole article on his viewpoints on whether the Constitution was pro- or anti-slavery, click on the link:

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1128

Wilberforce and Clarkson, clear-sighted as they were, took this view; and the American statesmen, in providing for the abolition of the slave trade, thought they were providing for the abolition of the slavery. This view is quite consistent with the history of the times. All regarded slavery as an expiring and doomed system, destined to speedily disappear from the country. But, again, it should be remembered that this very provision, if made to refer to the African slave trade at all, makes the Constitution anti-slavery rather than for slavery; for it says to the slave States, the price you will have to pay for coming into the American Union is, that the slave trade, which you would carry on indefinitely out of the Union, shall be put an end to in twenty years if you come into the Union. Secondly, if it does apply, it expired by its own limitation more than fifty years ago. Thirdly, it is anti-slavery, because it looked to the abolition of slavery rather than to its perpetuity. Fourthly, it showed that the intentions of the framers of the Constitution were good, not bad. I think this is quite enough for this point.

There were plenty of founding fathers who believed slavery was evil.  Washington, Adams, Franklin, and others.

Franklin became an abolutionist in the days before the American Revolution.

The Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery

In the years just prior to the American Revolution, Franklin started to cultivate a relationship with leading American abolitionists, namely Anthony Benezet. Franklin's stance on slavery changed from objecting to it on an economic level, to seeing it as a moral ill that plagued the early American state. In 1784, Franklin was appointed the head of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, one of the first public interest groups to attack slavery in the new American nation. In this capacity, Franklin wrote his most strenuous critiques of the practice of slave keeping. As a co-author of An Address to the Public, by the Pennsylvania Society, Franklin wrote that slavery, "is such an atrocious debasement of human nature," that allowing the practice to continue was akin to committing evil acts. Franklin's views on slavery, that it was not only an economic ill that harmed the American nation, but also one that destroyed the moral footing of the state was a complete change from his earlier, slave owning days.

Did he have a different opinion about slavery in his past?  Yes.  His view evolved over his lifetime.

http://www.suite101.com/content/bejnamin-franklin-and-slavery-a57663

Washington views on slavery:

In 1786, Washington wrote to two Americans expressing his desire to see the lawful end to slavery. In a letter to Robert Morris he wrote, "I hope it will not be conceived from these observations, that it is my wish to hold the unhappy people, who are the subject of this letter, in slavery. I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it; but there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by Legislative authority…" To John Francis Mercer he wrote that it was among his “…first wishes to see some plan adopted, by the legislature by which slavery in this country may be abolished by slow, sure, and imperceptible degrees.” 

Jefferson's views on slavery:

Contradictory.  In the early draft of the Declaration of Independence, he wanted to put an end to the practice. 

John Adams view on slavery:  

"Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States....I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in...abhorrence." John Adams (letter to Evans, 8 June 1819) 

Patrick Henry's views on slavery:

"I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we do is to improve it, if it happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot and an abhorrence of slavery."  Patrick Henry (letter to Robert Pleasants, 18 January 1773) 

Clearly, there were many voices - powerful ones - who opposed the practice. As idealistic as they were, they were also pragmatists and wanted a solid union.  

The Constitutional Convention would never have ratified if compromises weren't made by these men.  

-- Edited by SamuraiLandshark on Tuesday 12th of April 2011 08:54:42 AM

There is no anti-slavery language in the Constitution before the Civil War amendments. The original Constitution condoned slavery and prohibited any amendments prohibiting the slave trade for twenty(ish) years. No other amendments were precluded by the Constitution when it was ratified. There were anti-slavery voices, but the southern states would not have joined the union without the constitutionality of slavery being assured in the Constitution. The anti-slavery voices realized the necessity of a union and caved to practical concerns over common defense.

I agree with your characterization of the formation of the Constitution except for the notion that anti-slavery forces had any sort of success. They did not, and slavery was enshrined in the Constitution in stark contrast to the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence. This simply set a time bomb ticking that blew up into the Civil War

Attempts to "whitewash" American history are irritating. History should be inclusive, warts and all.

Your whitewash comment is a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black. Your view that the anti-slavery forces did not have any sort of success and that slavery was “enshrined” in the Constitution is such a gross misrepresentation of the facts of history that it amounts to a lie. Unfortunately it is a lie that has been repeated so many times that it has achieved the status of conventional wisdom. It’s one of those things that “everybody knows,” that unfortunately just ain’t so. Irritating indeed.

The foremost authority on the political ideas of the founding generation, historian Bernard Bailyn, says To see in the Founders' failure to destroy chattel slavery the opposite belief, or some self-delusive hypocrisy that somehow condemns as false the liberal character of the Revolution - to see in the Declaration of Independence a statement of principles that was meant to apply only to whites and that was ignored even by its author in its application to slavery, and to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to sustain aristocracy and perpetuate black bondage - is, I believe, to fundamentally misread the history of the time. Bailyn also says What is significant in the historical context of the time is not that the liberty-loving Revolutionaries allowed slavery to survive, but that they - even those who profited directly from the institution - went so far in condemning it, confining it, and setting in motion the forces that would ultimately destroy it. Lest I be accused of cherry picking these quotes, the full context of Bailyn’s comments is provided below.

In their book “Decision in Philadelphia,” Christopher Collier and James Lincoln Collier describe tell WHOLE story, warts and all, illustrating in great detail how the question of slavery “ran into everything. Moreover, the issues it touched upon were themselves intermeshed.” And “The bargaining between North and South, as must now be abundantly clear, was enormously convoluted, with the main deals being continually modified by subbargains, which were in turn further adjusted with yet other bargains.” ( P.223)

“The prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory was, then, the first major advantage the North gained from this complex deal. The second was the agreement that the Northwest Territory would be divided into no more than five states, instead of the relatively large number- ten or fourteen-suggested by earlier congressional committees. (In the end it became Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota.) This was something the northerners wanted, because they feared a flood of new states would destroy their majority in the Senate, which they expected to be their counterweight against future southern majorities in the lower house, produced by rising population in the South. The South, assuming that many of the new states would be slave states, had no quarrel with a large number of new states, which might give slavery a majority in the Senate. The final compromise on this issue therefore favored the North.” P. 219 – 220

Your other comments about shoehorning the Revolution into conservatism, your characterization of conservatism itself, the English “Constitution,” and just about all the rest exhibit a misread of history of on par with your mythology of the slavery issue, and are similarly misinformed.

Here’s Bailyn’s full quote:

Everywhere in America the principle prevailed that in a free community the purpose of institutions is to liberate men, not to confine them, and to give them the substance and the spirit to stand firm before the forces that would restrict them. To see in the Founders' failure to destroy chattel slavery the opposite belief, or some self-delusive hypocrisy that somehow condemns as false the liberal character of the Revolution-to see in the Declaration of Independence a statement of principles that was meant to apply only to whites and that was ignored even by its author in its application to slavery, and to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to sustain aristocracy and perpetuate black bondage-is, I believe, to fundamentally misread the history of the time.

To condemn the founders of the Republic for having tolerated and perpetuated a society that rested on slavery is to expect them to have been able to transcend altogether the limitations of their own age. The eighteenth century was a brutal age. Human relations in British society were savage in a hundred different ways. In the placid countryside and sleepy market towns of eighteenth-century England, J. H. Plumb writes,

“the starving poor were run down by the yeomanry, herded into jails, strung up on gibbets, transported to the colonies. No one cared. This was a part of life like the seasons, like the deep-drinking, meat-stuffing orgies of the good times and bumper harvests. The wheel turned, some were crushed, some favoured. Life was cheap enough. Boys were urged to fight. Dogs baited bulls and bears. ****s slaughtered each other for trivial wagers.... Death came so easily. A stolen penknife and a boy of ten was strung up at Norwich; a handkerchief, taken secretly by a girl of fourteen, brought her the noose. Every six weeks London gave itself to a raucous fete as men and women were dragged to Tyburn to meet their end at the hangman's hands. The same violence, the same cruelty, the same wild aggressive spirit infused all ranks of society.... Young aristocrats -the Macaronis-fantastically and extravagantly dressed, rip-roared through the town, tipping up night watchmen, beating up innocent men and women. Jails and workhouses resembled concentration camps; starvation and cruelty killed the sick, the poor and the guilty.... Vile sfums in the overcrowded towns bred violent epidemics; typhoid, cholera, smallpox ravaged the land.5”

Chattel slavery was brutal and degrading, but as far as the colonists knew, slavery in one form or another had always existed, and if it was brutal and degrading, so too was much else of ordinary life at the lower levels of society. Only gradually were men coming to see that this was a peculiarly degrading and a uniquely brutalizing institution, and to this dawning awareness the Revolution made a major contribution. To note only that certain leaders of the Revolution continued to enjoy the profits of so savage an institution and in their reforms failed to obliterate it inverts the proportions of the story. What is significant in the historical context of the time is not that the liberty-loving Revolutionaries allowed slavery to survive, but that they - even those who profited directly from the institution - went so far in' condemning it, confining it, and setting in motion the forces that would ultimately destroy it. For they were practical and moderate men, though idealistic and hopeful of human progress. Their mingling of the ideal and the real, their reluctance to allow either element to absorb the other altogether, their refusal, in a word, to allow the Revolutionary movement to slide off into fanaticism, is one of the Revolution's most important features. And of this, as of so much else, Jefferson is the supreme exemplar: in him a ruthless practicality mingled so incongruously with a sublime idealism that his personality seemed to his enemies, as it has seemed to modern historians concentrating on his "darker side," to have been grossly lacking in integrity. All of the Founders hoped to create a free society in America; not all of them could, or would, recognize, as Jefferson did, that this could only end in the destruction of chattel slavery. And those who recognized this and who strove to break the hold of this vicious institution so long before its condemnation became a common moral stance acted within a system of priorities that limited what they could achieve.

The highest priority was reserved for whatever tended to guarantee the survival of the republican nation itself, for in its continuing existence lay all hopes for the future. Most of the Revolutionary leaders hated slavery - not one of them ever publicly endorsed it - but they valued the preservation of the Union more. A successful and liberty-loving republic might someday destroy the slavery that it had been obliged to tolerate at the start; a weak and fragmented nation would never be able to do so. The haters of slavery were also limited in what they could accomplish by their respect for property, which like personal liberty was also part of the liberal state they sought 'to create. And they were, finally, fearful of the unforeseeable consequences in race relations that would result if the slaves-to the colonists still mysteriously alien, politically backward, and at least latently hostile people-were suddenly set free. It took a vast leap of the imagination in the eighteenth century to consider integrating into the political community the existing slave population, whose very "nature" was the subject of puzzled inquiry and who had hitherto been politically nonexistent. But despite all of this, from the very earliest days of the Revolutionary movement the agonizing contradiction between chattel slavery and the freedom of a liberal state was seen, and the hope was formed that somehow, someday, the abhorrent practice of owning men would be destroyed. In the year of Jefferson's death slavery still existed, but it was "a crippled, restricted, peculiar institution," destroyed in the North, forbidden in the Northwest, compressed deeper and deeper-and more and more explosively- into the South. If the Free Soilers of the 1850s, like the Republican platform writers of 1860, exaggerated the Founders' political commitment to the outright abolition of slavery, they correctly sensed the antislavery temper of the Revolutionary age. The ideological continuity between Jefferson and Lincoln is direct; however much their approach to the question of race may have differed, both-deeply believed that slavery was "wrong and ought to be restricted"; both groped for ways of advancing that restriction; neither would destroy the Union to effect it.

Winchester:

The fact there had been dissent over slavery, and failed efforts at equality during reconstruction, shows only that the controlling majority of the country did not favor civil rights.  They continued to oppose civil rights brutally.  The Supreme Court failed plaintiffs seeking to enforce civil rights almost every time until the 1950s. 

The labels of republican and democrat mean different things at different times in U.S. history.  Republicans favoring civil rights during reconstruction were the liberals of their time.  Reconstruction was a horribly missed opportunity for equal rights that the majority of the country turned its back on - allowing southern states to use force and then state laws against blacks to keep them in their place.   Nothing interfered with that policy of violence and state law for nearly 100 years.

Once organized opposition came in the mid-fifties, change came a decade later.

the shift from a segregated south to outlawing legal segregation took place over a decade or so of Courtroom battles, civil disobediance, and protests that culminating in the Civil Rights legislation of 1964. Considering the history of race relations in this country for the previous 200 years, that was a very quick and dramatic change in my view.

This is false.

The shift had started before the Constitution was written. Further, the Civil Rights act of 1964 was preceded by almost 100 years by similar acts .

At the time of our Founding the country was near anarchy due to the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. A stronger form of government was imperative if we were to preserve the freedoms won by the Revolution. This was the impetus behind the Constitutional Convention, and its chief objective.

A strong anti-slavery movement existed in America at the time of the Convention. The anti-slavery faction at the Constitutional Convention pushed as much anti-slavery language into the Constitution as it thought it could without risking failure to achieve the chief objective.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was preceded by, and is the intellectual inheritor of, legislation introduced by Republicans after the Civil War. For example, the Republican sponsored Civil Rights act of 1866, which…

accomplished three primary objectives designed to integrate blacks into mainstream American society. First, the act proclaimed "that all persons born in the United States ... are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States."

Second, the act specifically defines the rights of American citizenship:

Such citizens, of every race and color, and without regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, ... shall have the same right in every state and territory in the United States, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of person and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom to the contrary notwithstanding.

Third, the act made it unlawful to deprive a person of any of these rights of citizenship on the basis of race, color, or prior condition of slavery or involuntary servitude.

But Democratic President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill.

Johnson’s principal objection was a matter of procedure. In his veto message he argued that Congress lacked the constitutional authority to enact the bill because "eleven of the thirty-six States are unrepresented in Congress at the present time." Johnson also made clear, however, that he rejected the very idea of federal protection of civil rights for blacks, arguing that such a practice violated "all our experience as a people" and represented a disturbing move "toward centralization and the concentration of all legislative powers in the national government."

Perhaps the most striking feature of Johnson's veto message was its racism and inflammatory language. For example, Johnson objected that the act established "for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the general government has ever provided to the white race.

But fortunately, his veto backfired:

The effect of Johnson's veto was to strengthen Republican opposition to his presidential policy. Congress overrode the veto and enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866. It also proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove all doubt about its power to pass this sort of protective legislation. Unlike the 1866 act, however, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified two years later, employs general language to prohibit discrimination against citizens and to ensure equal protection under the laws.

Incorporating these protections into the Constitution marked a critical moment in the development of federal power over the states when it came to protecting the rights of citizens. To emphasize this new commitment to federal power, the Civil Rights Act of 1866 was reenacted as section 18 of the Civil Rights Act of 1870. The 1870 act prohibited conspiracies of two or more persons that threatened a citizen's "enjoyment of any right or privilege granted or secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States." It also extended federal protection to voting rights for blacks.
…
Political rights would later be secured by the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and the passage of civil rights legislation in 1870, and revisited nearly a century later in the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Congress's attempt to grant social rights to blacks in the Civil Rights Act of 1875 was struck down by the United States Supreme Court as unconstitutional in The Civil Rights Cases (1883). However, Congress ultimately prevailed in granting social rights to blacks with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
…
THE ACT'S ENDURING SPIRIT

The spirit of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 lives on in modern antidiscrimination laws. One such law (42 U.S.C., section 1981) provides, in language derived largely from section 1 of the 1866 act, that "all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens." This law is often relied on by plaintiffs alleging employment discrimination or discrimination in public or private education. Another law (42 U.S.C., section 1982), which was originally a part of section 1 of the 1866 act, "bars all racial discrimination, private as well as public, in the sale or rental of property," and is frequently used in connection with housing discrimination lawsuits. A law (42 U.S.C., section 1983) granting private individuals today the right to sue for deprivation of civil rights by state officials echoes section 2 of the 1866 act as well as a subsequent act, the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act), which authorized civil and criminal penalties against rights violators in response to claims of lawlessness in the South.
http://www.enotes.com/major-acts-congress/civil-rights-act

Very rapid political change has been shown to be extremely dangerous: French Revolution, Russian revolution, Hitler, Mao, etc. That is why our efforts at regime change in the middle east in favor of democracy are very questionable and hardly conservative even though initiated by a Republican president, and now continuted by a democratic one.

However, on rare occassions and in the right environment, rapid political change can work quite well: The American Revolution

The violence of the French Revolution, Hitler, Mao, etc. had nothing to do with the fact that the change was rapid. Those were all totalitarian collectivist movements intent on casting aside the social behaviors and structures, that is to say the lessons, of history and replacing them with “designed” societies. And they all failed, as designed societies are want to do.

The American Revolution was not a rapid change. It took place in the minds of the people over the course of a generation or two leading up to actual hostilities. And the change happened mostly in England, on the part of the King and Parliament, who together were destroying the tradition of freedom and balance of power that had evolved in England over the preceding centuries.

The aim of the American Revolution was to preserve (i.e., to conserve) the British tradition of liberty. After indepence was gained, and America essentially had a blank slate upon which to write a new Constitution, it chose to refine and enhance that tradition, again based on the lessons of history and the knowledge of human nature that they bring rather than to cast it all aside and start from scratch.

The Civil Rights Movement was the culmination of a century long process.

It still is not complete.

That hardly qualifies as "rapid".

 

Winchester:

I agree with your general characterization of liberals and conservatives, and that is why I believe conservatives are important for political and social stability.   Liberals are necessary for change, but conservatives slow down or moderate the change to reduce the effect of unintended consequences of proposed changes.  Very rapid political change has been shown to be extremely dangerous:  French Revolution, Russian revolution, Hitler, Mao, etc.  That is why our efforts at regime change in the middle east in favor of democracy are very questionable and hardly conservative even though initiated by a Republican president, and now continuted by a democratic one. 

However, on rare occassions and in the right environment, rapid political change can work quite well:  The American Revolution, Ghandi's movement toward an independent India (until he died), the civil rights movement of the 60's, and with luck - perhaps Egypt's recent change of government though that remains to be seen. 

I also have read similar quotes about the role of reason vs. experience and passion.  Experience is stored in the old brain and leads to "gut" feelings that are often more accurate than "logic" in figuring out complex and urgent problems.  Our experience pushes along in sub-conscious decision making, and then we verbalize why.  This is why demogogues and mobs are scary, they run on almost pure emotion and reason has little involvement.

I suspect that the analogy to the rider on the charging elephant is accurate most of the time.  However, it is when the elephant is not charging that the rider (reason) should have some control.  There are times when reflection and reason can guide calm, trained elephants, and that is when appeals to reason may be effective.  Unfortunately, as Catahoula and I recently demonstrated, it is difficult for elephants to remain calm during political discussions.

 What is peculiar to me is how the right has been able to successfully characterize modest income  tax increases as radical political change tantamount to socialism.  Taxes have been much higher in the past.  An amendment to the Costitution was passed to overrule a conservative Supreme Court decision that held them unconstutitonal (during the Gilded Age I believe).  They have used a crisis and the media  brilliantly, but perversely, to create an illusion of striking and radical change in undoing the Bush tax cuts.  That level of "spreading the wealth around" would  hardly have been drastic.

Now, it is all about cutting services, not about raising revenue.  Government expenses should be cut and revenue should be raised.  The richest and most powerful should bear the brunt, not the poorest and least politically powerful.

"If you are going to paragraph post blather as substance . . . "   Does that mean something along the lines of, "if you are going to post paragraphs of blather  masquerading as substance. . . ?"  Again, I am called upon to interpret Catahoula speak.  Does "paragraph post" have some particular meaning to you and is English your second or third language?  My french is extremely rudimentary, so you might have me there.

I may disagree with busdriver, but at least I can understand what it is I disagree with.  There is enough smoke that perhaps after we crawl through it a while, and after the air clears, we might find ourselves on the same side after all, though I doubt it.

Everyone makes grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and the like, and I am probably more guilty of abusing the language in my posts than most.  However, it is your penchant for angling obliquely at posts you oppose, looping around issues, eschewing the frontal attack that I find so dizzying.  If you find that tactic works for you, go for it. 

It does create an air of mystery.  Are these words of sage or a madman?  Are they the expressions of an idiot savant in the field of language, or just the former?  I am quite sure you are capable of direct statements, but you simply refuse to engage in them.

If you look back at our exchange of pleasantries, it is clear that you took the first shot.  It seemed to me you missed, so I fired back, and we have been sniping at each other since then.  Now, substance has more or less gone out the window, presumably to escape the line of fire.  We should stop shooting and invite substance back into the discussion.

I will start?  What was it about my prior posts on the topic of wealth distribution, the death tax, or related subjects that you found so lacking in support, logic, moral soundness, substance, or all of the above?  I have been pointing out that the argument that poor people don't pay taxes, so how can lowerng taxes on the rich harm them, ignores the reality that it takes away money that could be used for a social safety net, and weakening the social safety net is a clear detriment to the poor.  Moreover, the rich haven't used their tax cuts to trickle down their wealth and prosperity on the rest of us, that voodoo has never worked.  I believe I also pointed out that taxes do not take money from the wealthy to "enrich" the poor, because the poor remain poor even with higher taxes on the wealthy.  The difference is that the poor may be less destitute if there is an adequate social safety net funded by more taxes on the more fortunate among us.  I also do not view the rich as evil or believe that there should be complete levelling or equality of outcomes.  Raising taxes, or ending the Bush tax cuts, would not have resulting in exteme levelling or equality of outcomes, just redistributed some of the wealth that has flowed to the rich back to the people who are not so fortunate.

If you simply disagree without any particular argument as to why, then nevermind.  If you have an argument as to why my position is blather, than I would like to hear it.

 

 

Nah, I find this pretty darn entertaining.

BTW: If you're going to paragraph post blather as substance, you really shouldn't complain aobut being called on it.

Yes, it has gotten old and tired, but I am willing to turn back to substance if you are.

No, it is the way I respond to blather that I find difficult to understand.  I still don't understand where you perceive that I was "blowing smoke" to "flesh out a weak claim."  By the way, you have twisted your metaphor to the point of breaking as I have never known smoke to flesh out anything.  Smoke might obscure a weak claim, if that is what you were after.

No, but I do think that if corporate CEO were tax heavily on earnings / income / accrued wealth in any form over $1,000,000 per year, there would be substantially more money for the social safety net and no lack of talented individuals willing to work for $1,000,000 per year.  Same for athletes, movie stars, entertainers of any stripe and virtually any line of work.  Now, some people used to making way more than that now may lack incentive to continue to work for such a pittance, but those talented folks on the way up would be delighted to fill the shoes of those who cannot be persuaded to stay for love of the work and $1,000,000. 

Of course, $1,000,000 is completely arbitrary.  Some other number or sliding scale might make more sense, and the government should never take all of someone's money over a certain threshold.  However, the point is the same no matter where one pegs the number or numbers as long as it is substantially lower than what top CEO's, entertainers, etc. currently earn in the U.S.  If this causes them all to move to foreign tax havens, c'est la vie.  Perhaps that is were we can direct our next military adventure.  (That last sentence was a joke Catahoula.)

Catahoula:  I hope that you enjoy your extremely opaque, and either deliberately obtuse or accidently obtuse, style of posting.  At least then someone would be deriving some benefit from it.  Other's might benefit as well if they could parse Catahoula speak, but I confess that I am not up to the task of deciphering that arcane dialect of the English language, an odd brew of sarcasm, misconstruction, indirection, diistortion, and conservatism.  Nonetheless, without really understanding what you are tyring to say, I'll assume that you disagree with me; at least, I would expect you to. 

I was not joking.  I used sarcasm in one phrase that I mistakenly thought would be obvious, even to you, in one part of my prior post.  Your responsive post blurs the line between something that is a joke, and something that is laughable.  Either way, it is difficult for me to take seriously.  However, from the perspective of both style and content, you do have seem to have a healthy appreciation of the absurd.  I guess that approach can be fun at times.  It is usually more fun for me to actually try to address issues to the best of my limited abilities, but the First Amendment is quite robust and you can  certainly do whatever you wish to with your posts.  I suspect you and I might find completely different uses for them. 

Cat:  exactly right, children cannot be credited with choosing their parents.  As one who rarely, if ever, posts without sarcasm, I am surprised that you did not recognize it in my post.

Your first sentence does not make sense to me.  If most people did not see private wealth as belonging to them, that would seem to be good for the "share the wealth" crowd.  I suspect that most people are unwiling to admit that they did not earn every penny that they have received, and that they benefitted from good genes, good birth order, mentors, parents who cared, etc.

The notion of the poor voting to enrich themselves is laughable.  A social safety net "enriches" nobody.  It prevents the greater poverty that would exist without it.