Quote:
Originally posted by MS Fowler
Kirk,
Again, I think you are over-reacting. The founders of this country were definitely men of thier times. They had the vision to understand that all men were essentially equal. In that view they were quite a bit ahead of thier time. Think of the historical context and put yourself there.
However, they were inconsistant in seeing all the ramifications of their loftly views. Most of them struggled mightily with the concept, and practice of slavery. Who wrote more eloquently about freedom than that slave-holder, Thomas Jefferson? He, like many of his contemporaries, was conflicted about the institution, but he was a "gradualist"; He felt that eventually we would find a way to eliminate it, but the "how" was beyond him.
Given our perspective, it is easy to judge them as "liars", but that probably is not a fair assessment of them.
There will be issues about our own time, which 200 years from now, will have a similar look to those people. WE will look like the inconsistent, evil people.
One of my favorite Lincoln quotes ( talk about an inconsistant man!) comes from the end of his second Innaugural addresss, something along these lines, " and if every drop of blood drawn with the lash must be repaid with one drawn by the sword, what can we say except, " the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether"? ( the quote being a biblical text--for the benefit of those who didn't know)
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I don't know if I agree. The darkest stain upon ourselves and on mankind in many ways, is our history of slavery from 1776 until 1865. The myth of the Old South, the myth of the altruism of our Founding Father cult-figures wither in front of the evidence of their support of human slavery. The men who first came here came to exploit the land, and they were moved by a greed so deep and so corrupting that they forever cast into to doubt their own principles. They were all men of the Enlighment, steeped in the works of all of the world's greatest philosphers, who left themselves an out for the purpose of their own greed. They knew what they were doing was immoral. It is one of the greatest tragedies of human failure in history. I looked back to see if I used the term "liars" in relation to the founding fathers, but could not find the context you refer to - these men were the last men I would call liars, but they certainly were among the worlds greatest hypocrites. In addition, their thoughts were not all that revolutionary - Parliament ruled England at the time, much of what we said of the "tyrant king" was propaganda - representative democracy was in the cards either way and was already being extensively practiced in America. Given that slavery was outlawed in the British Empire in 1805, we might have been better off if we stayed.
Lincoln's quote about sums up anything I have to say about the slaveholders of the Old South. In many ways, they are among history's greatest villians. The profitability of cotton had reached the point that paid labor was economically feasible after 1850, in fact we have grown and shipped plenty since 1865. Despite all the protestations of "states rights" etc, there was never much more than the same soul-deep greed I described above at work in the Old South. Theirs was the seminal fascist state, with a Master Race, with the worship of the Military Class, with forced labor camps, with the basic idea that one class of humans could be tortured, raped or murdered by another class of humans under color of law, there was absolutely nothing to be proud of by anybody, and Sherman should be thanked for burning it to the ground. The only thing that would have come out of a slave empire to our South would be a country so montrously evil that it would only be worthy of contempt. It is obvious whose side they would have fought on in World War II, making all of our fates to be that of slaves if we had allowed it to happen.