The Jefferson Jackson Bailey dinners are famous events for the state Democratic Party in Connecticut. However, as part of the backlash against historical figures who owned slaves, the NAACP demanded that both names be stripped away from the dinner and the state Democratic Party agreed.
Nick Balletto, the party’s first-year chairman, said that he hoped other states would follow suit and do “the right thing.” Some may disagree with that assessment.
First, I have been a long critic of Jackson who is legitimately blamed for the Trail of Tears and other atrocities against Native Americans. He is also viewed as the father of the patronage system. He also openly challenged the authority of the Supreme Court to restrain him. It has always astonished me that Democratic Party embraced such an abusive figure as Jackson. However, Jefferson is a founding father who is credited not only with the Declaration of Independence but key rights like those of religious freedoms.
Second, stripping away references to all slave owners would wipe out many if not most of the framers. Slavery was a tremendous evil at the time and those framers with slaves are legitimately criticized for calling for political and social rights while enslaving other human beings. They were flawed figures but they were also the creators of a system that allowed for not only the evolution of rights but the ultimate rejection of slavery.
Scot X. Esdaile, the head of Connecticut’s NAACP, insisted that only stripping away such names can heal the wounds of racism and that the move of the Democratic Party was “making the symbolic first step and striving to right the wrongs of the past . . . You can’t right all the wrongs, but I think it’s a symbolic gesture of our support for their party.”
Ironically, Jefferson was one of the most active in seeking to curtail slavery. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson originally sought to criticize England for forcing the slave trade on the colonies but it was taken out of the draft. In 1778, Jefferson led the effort to ban the importation of slaves into Virginia and as President fought against the slave trade. In 1784 Jefferson unsuccessfully proposed federal legislation banning slavery in the New Territories of the North and South after 1800. He wrote about the corrupting influence of slavery. In other words, his story is a complex one and captures a generation that was moving at least in part toward the emancipation of slaves.
What do you think?
Why not, Paul? That’s all you ever use.
Both men did remarkable things in their days, but they did too many horrible things as well. They were indeed very ignorant men, but so were the majority of people during that time.
lyris65:
Now we are getting near to the truth of what happened. You are right there was ignorance and bigotry on all sides. However the most maligned of all was King George who never deserved the pasting he got. Lord North is a different matter.
lyris65 wrote: “They were indeed very ignorant men, but so were the majority of people during that time.”
You only reveal your own ignorance by making a statement like this. Jefferson was learned in all the classical languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, etc. Are you fluent in these languages? He wrote brilliantly about issues, crafted superb legislation that brought together people into consensus, and he founded the University of Virginia. What university have you founded?
They were indeed very ignorant men? I don’t think so.
davidm2575:
There isn’t anything ignorant about being wrong. And they knew they were wrong. But they still went ahead with it. And that was hipocrisy. They spoiled a good idea.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “… they knew they were wrong. But they still went ahead with it. And that was hipocrisy. They spoiled a good idea.”
It was not hypocrisy. They had a humility to recognize that no single individual understands everything. The complexity of society required them to put forward good ideas and to patiently work toward implementing them. They created a Republic that history has shown worked better than most other governments. The problem is that many ignorant people today do not understand what made it work so well. The democracy that is now being pushed forward is destroying that Republic that they had created. Whereas before we had no direct taxation of the people, now the people are taxed oppressively to fund wars, to create social programs, and to line the pockets of politicians and their friends. Ideologies of socialism and communism are stealing the ground they had established with their unique and original idea of how government ought to work. The real question is whether enough Americans are going to stand up to government oppression and tyranny and take back our country. We need to get rid of direct taxation, get rid of social welfare programs, have limited government more concerned about security and personal liberty, and get rid of the cancerous equal rights meme and establish true equal opportunity for everyone who is willing to do the hard work necessary to achieve what they want.
davidm2575:
But it didn’t work. It lay the foundations for civil war and huge loss of life. It only started to work in the 1960s. You know these truths to be self evident.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “But it didn’t work. It lay the foundations for civil war and huge loss of life. It only started to work in the 1960s. You know these truths to be self evident.”
Self-evident? I am bewildered by your perspective. What is it about what our framers did that you think is responsible for our short civil war?
And what happened in 1960 that supposedly made it start to work? In my mind, that’s when we really took off to move away from what our founders started. Our founders would be horrified with what is going on today with direct taxation, welfare, federalized healthcare, etc.
david – I keep trying to get ninny to read American Government for Dummies, but he won’t. Please don’t expect him to make sense.
And thanks for quoting Lincoln’s “Fragment on the Constitution and Union” that I introduced to you a couple of weeks back. Good to see you are learning something from this site.
Olly: Learning
it’s a pity no one else is
“To Olly: Impossible to be sure.
But if this had been agreed the country would have been founded on principles of freedom liberty and justice for all.”
ninianpeckett,
It wasn’t a difficult question if you were being intellectually honest. The answer is the constitution would never have been ratified and the opportunity for the states to unite and actually begin the hard work of living up live up to those principles that we were founded on would have been completely lost.
The other 3000 words you wrote and anything else for that matter isn’t worth reading.
Thanks anyway.
Olly: only 2 States objected out of 13
Professor Ninian Peckitt ( a bullsh*t title I suspect) … you are a piece of work. How do you find your logic? I give up. Yee f’ing gawd….you are not a “Yank” and make a poor fake one…go home to your Brit homeland and be happy. Or just drop dead, whichever.
Aridog: so your ancestors weren’t loyalists then?
ninianpeckitt,
What would have been the result if the 13 original colonies were given a constitution to ratify that abolished the institution of slavery?
To Olly: Impossible to be sure.
But if this had been agreed the country would have been founded on principles of freedom liberty and justice for all. It would have set an example to the whole world. America could lecture the world from a position of moral strength instead of a position of hipocrisy.
It would have sent shock waves around the globe and established America as a Great Nation.
A decision like this might have averted a civil war or hastened a smaller civil war with fewer casualties.
But the problem is that America doesn’t think like this. National thinking is based on autarky and this self reliance affects the National Psyche.
So there would probably be a refusal to educate slaves and integrate them into society. I think many slaves would have been repatriated and/or they may have been treated like the Native Indians and put into resetvations creating problems for the future. So freeing large numbers of slaves without planning the future would have caused major social problems, which of course would never have happened if slave labour had not been introduced in the first place.
But there was support for abolition.
At he time of the American Founding, there were about half a million slaves in the United States, mostly in the five southernmost states, where they made up 40 percent of the population. Many of the leading American Founders-most notably Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison-owned slaves, but many did not. Benjamin Franklin thought that slavery was “an atrocious debasement of human nature” and “a source of serious evils.” He and Benjamin Rush founded the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery in 1774.
John Jay, who was the president of a similar society in New York, believed:
the honour of the states, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.
John Adams opposed slavery his entire life as a “foul contagion in the human character” and “an evil of colossal magnitude.” James Madison called it “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”
From his first thoughts about the Revolution, to his command of the Continental army, to his presidential administration, George Washington’s life and letters reflect a statesman struggling with the reality and inhumanity of slavery in the midst of the free nation being constructed. In 1774, Washington compared the alternative to Americans asserting their rights against British rule to being ruled “till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway.”
When Washington took command of the Continental army in 1775, there were both slaves and free blacks in its ranks (about 5,000 blacks served in the Continental army.) Alexander Hamilton proposed a general plan to enlist slaves in the army that would in the end “give them their freedom with their muskets,” and Washington supported such a policy (with the approval of Congress) in South Carolina and Georgia, two of the largest slaveholding states.
In 1786, Washington wrote of slavery, “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it.” He devised a plan to rent his lands and turn his slaves into paid laborers, and at the end of his presidency he quietly freed several of his own household slaves. In the end, he could take it no more and decreed in his will that his slaves would become free upon the death of his wife. The old and infirm were to be cared for while they lived, and the children were to be taught to read and write and trained in a useful skill until they were age 25. Washington’s estate paid for this care until 1833.
During his first term in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson proposed legislation to emancipate slaves in Virginia, but the motion was soundly defeated. His 1774 draft instructions to the Virginia Delegates for the First Continental Congress, A Summary View of the Rights of British America, called for an end to the slave trade: “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.” That same year, the First Continental Congress agreed to discontinue the slave trade and boycott other nations that engaged in it. The Second Continental Congress reaffirmed this policy in 1776.
Jefferson’s draft constitution for the state of Virginia forbade the importation of slaves, and his draft of the Declaration of Independence-written at a time when he himself had inherited about 200 slaves-included a paragraph condemning the British king for introducing slavery into the colonies and continuing the slave trade:
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and 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 a 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.
These words were especially offensive to delegates from Georgia and South Carolina, who were unwilling to acknowledge that slavery went so far as to violate the “most sacred rights of life and liberty.” So, like some of Jefferson’s more expressive phrases attacking the king, these lines were dropped in the editing process.
Nevertheless, Jefferson’s central point-that all men are created equal-remained as an obvious rebuke to the institution. From very early in the movement for independence, it was understood that calls for colonial freedom from British tyranny had clear implications for domestic slavery. “The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white and black,” James Otis wrote in 1761. “Does it follow that it is the right to enslave a man because he is black?” In the wake of independence, state after state passed legislation restricting or banning the institution.
In 1774, Rhode Island had already passed legislation providing that all slaves imported thereafter should be freed. In 1776, Delaware prohibited the slave trade and removed restraints on emancipation, as did Virginia in 1778. In 1779, Pennsylvania passed legislation providing for gradual emancipation, as did New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the early 1780s, and New York and New Jersey in 1799 and 1804. In 1780, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that the state’s bill of rights made slavery unconstitutional. By the time of the U.S. Constitution, every state (except Georgia) had at least proscribed or suspended the importation of slaves.
Thomas Jefferson’s 1784 draft plan of government for the western territories prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude after the year 1800. The final Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress (and passed again two years later by the First Congress and signed into law by President George Washington), prohibited slavery in the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin. That same year, Jefferson published his Notes on the State of Virginia, which included this passage about slavery:
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever … I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation.
When delegates convened at Philadelphia to write a new constitution, however, strong sectional interests supported the maintenance of slavery and the slave trade. “The real difference of interests,” Madison noted, “lay not between large and small states but between the Northern and Southern states. The institution of slavery and its consequences formed a line of discrimination.” In order to get the unified support needed for the Constitution’s ratification and successful establishment, the framers made certain concessions to the pro-slavery interests. The compromises they agreed to, however, were designed to tolerate slavery where it currently existed, not to endorse or advance the institution.
Consider the three compromises made by the Constitutional Convention delegates and approved as part of the final text:
On enumeration: Apportionment for Representatives and taxation purposes would be determined by the number of free persons and three-fifths “of all other Persons” (Art. I, Sec. 2). The pro-slavery delegates wanted their slaves counted as whole persons, thereby according their states more representation in Congress. It was the anti-slavery delegates who wanted to count slaves as less-not to dehumanize them but to penalize slaveholders. Indeed, it was antislavery delegate James Wilson of Pennsylvania who proposed the three-fifths compromise. Also, this clause did not include blacks generally, as free blacks were understood to be free persons.
On the slave trade: Congress was prohibited until 1808 from blocking the migration and importation “of such Persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit” (Art. I, Sec. 9). Although protection of the slave trade was a major concession demanded by pro-slavery delegates, the final clause was only a temporary exemption from a recognized federal power for the existing states. Moreover, it did not prevent states from restricting or outlawing the slave trade, which many had already done. “If there was no other lovely feature in the Constitution but this one,” James Wilson observed, “it would diffuse a beauty over its whole countenance. Yet the lapse of a few years, and Congress will have power to exterminate slavery from within our borders.” Congress passed such a national prohibition effective January 1, 1808, and President Jefferson signed it into law.
On fugitive slaves: The Privileges and Immunities Clause (Art. IV, Sec. 2) guaranteed the return upon claim of any “Person held to Service or Labour” in one state who had escaped to another state. At the last minute, the phrase “Person legally held to Service or Labour in one state” was amended to read “Person held to Service or Labour in one state, under the Laws thereof.” This revision emphasized that slaves were held according to the laws of individual states and, as the historian Don Fehrenbacher has noted, “made it impossible to infer from the passage that the Constitution itself legally sanctioned slavery.” Indeed, none of these clauses recognized slavery as having any legitimacy from the point of view of federal law.
It is significant to note that the words “slave” and “slavery” were kept out of the Constitution. Madison recorded in his notes that the delegates “thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.” This seemingly minor distinction of insisting on the use of the word “person” rather than “property” was not a euphemism to hide the hypocrisy of slavery but was of the utmost importance. Madison explained this in Federalist No. 54:
But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another-the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others-the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property.
Frederick Douglass, for one, believed that the government created by the Constitution “was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government.” Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland but escaped and eventually became a prominent spokesman for free blacks in the abolitionist movement. “Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution need be altered,” he wrote in 1864:
It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.
This point is underscored by the fact that, although slavery was abolished by constitutional amendment, not one word of the original text was amended or deleted.
Judging by the policy developments of the previous three decades, the Founders could be somewhat optimistic that the trend was against slavery. At the Constitutional Convention, Roger Sherman said: “the abolition of slavery seemed to be going on in the United States and that the good sense of the several states would probably by degrees complete it.” In the draft of his first inaugural address, George Washington looked forward to the day when “mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.” And in one of his last letters, Jefferson wrote:
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
Nevertheless, there was plenty of reason for concern. In 1776, Adam Smith argued in The Wealth of Nations that slavery was uneconomical because the plantation system was a wasteful use of land and because slaves cost more to maintain than free laborers. But in 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, making cotton production economical and leading to dramatic growth in the cotton industry, which greatly contributed to an increased demand for slave labor in the United States.
In 1819, during the debate over the admission of Missouri as a slave state, John Adams worried that a national struggle over slavery “might rend this mighty fabric in twain.” He told Jefferson that he was terrified about the future and appealed to him for guidance. “What we are to see God knows, and I leave it to Him and his agents in posterity,” he wrote. “I have none of the genius of Franklin, to invent a rod to draw from the cloud its thunder and lightning.”
The Missouri crisis was “a fire bell in the night,” wrote Jefferson in 1820. “We have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” But Jefferson gave no public support to emancipation and refused to free his own slaves. “This enterprise is for the young,” he wrote.
Slavery was indeed the imperfection that marred the American Founding. Those who founded this nation chose to make practical compromises for the sake of establishing in principle a new nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. “The inconsistency of the institution of slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented,” John Quincy Adams readily admitted in 1837. Nevertheless, he argued:
no charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence slavery, in common with every mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth.
“In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction,” Abraham Lincoln observed in 1858. “All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.”
Lincoln once explained the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence by reference to Proverbs 25:11: “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.” He revered the Constitution and was the great defender of the Union. But he knew that the word “fitly spoken”-the apple of gold-was the assertion of principle in the Declaration of Independence. “The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it,” Lincoln wrote. “The picture was made for the apple-not the apple for the picture.” That is, the Constitution was made to secure the unalienable rights recognized in the Declaration of Independence.
As such, the slavery compromises included in the Constitution can be understood-that is, can be understood to be compromises rather than a surrender of principle.
In other words it was a fudge.
King George III and Slavery.
Here is an interesting article which brings many things into perspective. One of the conclusions reached was that
King George III was the Great Emancipator fifty-six years before Abraham Lincoln.
It is my case that Americans don’t want to learn about what really happened. Because it doesn’t suit the purpose. Self criticism isn’t permitted in the “Land of the Free”…..
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/born-happiness-misery-king-george-iii
Wikipedia:
It’s nice to know that at least 50% of what I post is correct. At least that’s better than being 100% wrong. Paul take note.
Actually I have included information from multiple sources.
But there needs to be some soul searching. And when mistakes were made they need to be recognised. Only then can progression occur.
I have acknowledged the failings of the British (parliament rather than King) and explained that the colonies received favourable treatment is lower tax etc. These are issues conveniently forgotten in America because it challenges the myth.
America”s adherence to it rhetoric results in a system that cannot work as intended. And this is the issue that enrages some readers. Not because it is wrong but because it is true.
Progress cannot be made to secure a safe future for Americans with an intransigent viewpoint on personal liberty and that’s the point I am trying to make.
I think most bloggers will understand the points I am trying to make.
America has made huge progress towards its ideals. The election of a black president addressed centuries of institutional hipocrisy and was a landmark of what America stands for and something to celebrate. It is proof that the rhetoric has become reality and it is something to put critics in their place. I’m amazed this was not used as a stick to beat me. Maybe this is because of a latent resentment in some that it happened? It’s not important in this discussion whether Obama is a good or bad president. The issue is that he could be elected in the first place. And John Mc Cain’s speech was amazing.
I would like to think that the Founding Father’s would have approved. Because it sent a message out to the world that cannot be criticised.
ninianpeckitt – you are being deliberately obtuse. I said you had a 50/50 chance of being correct if you use Wikipedia. That means you also have a 50/50 chance of being wrong. I don’t see you citing a lot of sources for the crap you are expounding.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “I have acknowledged the failings of the British (parliament rather than King) and explained that the colonies received favourable treatment is lower tax etc. These are issues conveniently forgotten in America because it challenges the myth.”
What are you talking about? I have not forgotten that the colonies received some favorable treatment in the form of lower taxes. What myth does that even challenge? What you seem to have forgotten is that the principle of taxation without representation was the issue.
Consider Benjamin Franklin’s answer when questioned by the House of Commons about the objection of the colonies to internal taxation:
============================
Q. You say the Colonies have always submitted to external taxes, and object to the right of Parliament only in laying internal taxes; now can you show that there is any kind of difference between the two taxes to the Colony on which they may be laid?
A. I think the difference is very great. An external tax is a duty laid on commodities imported; that duty is added to the first cost and other charges on the commodity, and, when it is offered for sale, makes a part of the price. If the people do not like it at that price, they refuse it; they are not obliged to pay it. But an internal tax is forced from the people without their consent if not laid by their own representatives. The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us or ruin us by the consequence of refusing to pay it.
============================
http://www.bartleby.com/268/8/10.html
ninianpeckitt wrote: “Progress cannot be made to secure a safe future for Americans with an intransigent viewpoint on personal liberty and that’s the point I am trying to make.”
What is it about an intransigent viewpoint on personal liberty makes an unsafe future for Americans? Make your case. You keep putting forth assertions without any force of argument. I believe the safest future for Americans is to safeguard personal liberty. You disagree. Make your case. Karl Marx made his case. Stalin made his case. Present your case and let us judge it.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “I think most bloggers will understand the points I am trying to make.”
I don’t think so.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “America has made huge progress towards its ideals. The election of a black president addressed centuries of institutional hipocrisy and was a landmark of what America stands for and something to celebrate. It is proof that the rhetoric has become reality and it is something to put critics in their place. I’m amazed this was not used as a stick to beat me.”
It is fascinating to me how much importance you place on this. We have been electing black men and women to governmental offices for a long time. It is nothing spectacular to me in the least that we elected a black President. Most of us are color blind when it comes to race. What is spectacular to me is that we elected such an inept President… twice! Who cares about the color of his skin or about his ethnic heritage?
As for Prince Charles, at least he wished for something that was real.
Regerence:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Loyalist
ninianpeckitt – for God’s sakes, do not use Wikipedia. You only have a 50/50 chance they are right.
ninianpeckitt
By way of clarification and for your edification; I simply quote, for the benefit of all, exactly and precisely what the Founders established and what the Founders intended to stand in perpetuity – freedom – after throwing off the yoke of monarchy.
Collectivist liberals have progressively refitted and tightened the enslaving yoke of communism around the necks of Americans who don’t know or don’t care that they were and are intended to be free by the Founders.
It was not an American but the royal British Governor of Virginia Lord Dunsmore who was the first to offer freedom to all slaves in the newly minted USA when he declared by proclamation that every runaway slave who came to the British lines and who was willing to fight for King George would be a free person forever. To the best of my knowledge King George agreed. Thousands came. In fact so many that it became a problem for the Brits of feeding and clothing them all.Yes, this was for military purposes because the British were woefully short of soldiers. Yet the same option was available to President Washington who at times very badly needed soldiers too. If he had ever considered to do his own “Dunsmore” he would have run into the same problem that President Davis of the CSA faced towards the end of the Civil War. Even a President cannot take property without due process. The slave owners would have had to “lend” him their property for the duration of the war. Lord Dunsmore did not have that problem.
What President Lincoln did with the “Emancipation Proclamation” was therefore not original. He merely aped what Lord Dunsmore had done much earlier.
Perhaps there ought to be an annual “Dunsmore Dinner” on the day of his declaration?
The abolition of the importation of slaves to Virginia by Jefferson and later to the entire US under Monroe had only a marginal effect on the persistence of slavery. In fact it triggered the new abomination known as “slave breeding”. After all, slaves can have children and they did. Many a male slave owner helped.
If slavery was already a human abomination then, the fact that the children born to slave mothers were legally declared to be “property” of the slave owner exceeded even that abomination. I am at a loss of comprehension how such supposedly enlightened free men and women who had children of their own could accept that monstrosity other than the for them frightening prospect that slavery would end within one generation if all slave children were free from birth and the importation of slaves was stopped. There can be no excuse for any of the slave owners such as Washington and Jefferson. None. They knew very well that owners considered their slaves to be domesticated animals whose offspring was, in that respect, no different from the offspring of horses, pigs, donkeys, and cows. Such offspring was owned and could be sold. Or used as collateral for loans. Or kept as investment for capital gains.
Dieter Heymann – Lord Dunsmore only wanted blacks who could fight, he wasn’t taking everybody. As it was he ended up with about 300 troops.
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/lord-dunmore-s-ethiopian-regiment
Here are some really interesting views being posted.
Dieter has highlighted the fact that in 1776 black slaves were regarded as subhuman in that they were excluded from “freedom” which only applied to “freemen”. And yet they were regarded as human with respect to propagation. So if the word fascist is to be used in postings it clearly should be used to describe the Revolutionaries, whose self declared liberalism was nothithing more than fascism – ie rule by a new elite or Master Race . The fact that Lord Dunsmore freed black slaves coming to fight for the Loyalists and that this was sanctioned by the King, illustrates where true freedom resided at the time.
The notion that General Washington would have similar recruitment of black slaves on loan is the first example of “Lend Lease”.
This proves the hipocrisy of the Revolutionary Cause at the time of inception. It was a device to illegally seize power by a few privileged Americans bent on the abuse of the Rights of Man. Whilst this notion infuriates many Americans today, it is the truth of what happened.
The manipulation of the truth, in order to make history fit the political spin, puts Dr Goebels to shame. It is a masterful exercise of deception that holds these self evident things to be true.
Well it is clear that they weren’t true then and they aren’t true today.
This view is reinforced by the anger of posters who are showing a latent attitude of fascist bigotry without any shame or remorse. This is where the enemy of Freedom lies in America today.
You will have to keep very extreme views in check if America is to survive. This is something that was not comprehended in 1776 and it isn’t understood by many today. There has to be a difference between freedom of thought and freedom of action.
America went on to make the same decisions of all world powers including conquest.
● Indians – Ethnic Cleansing
● Acquisition of Texas
● Acquisition of California and other Mexican lands
● Conquest of Hawaii. This is surely the “Ireland of the United States”
● Acquisition of the Philippines.
For a country traditionally Anti-Empire and pro self-determination, this behaviour can only be consideted as an Empirical Expansion, make no bones about it. If Louisiana Purchase had not been possible the land would have been taken by force in line with the concept nineteenth century “American Liebenstraum”.
America is now coming to a crossroads with respect to its Hollywood concepts of Freedom and will have to enter the world of reality if the stability of society is to be maintained for the “American Dream”.
Our local UK Fascist (as he has been so eloquently described by bloggers) David Cameron has explained what he wants to do and yet a convicted terrorist was just released yesterday in the UK by order of the Court of Appeal on condition of tagging. So you are not the only country which has individual rights issues that clash with concerns over public safety and freedom of the majority to live their lives in safety. Maybe we should Arm ourselves and blow this man away? Because that’s what would happen in the Land of the Free, unless it was his freedom that we were talking about.
This is the legacy of Individual Freedom.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “Dieter has highlighted the fact that in 1776 black slaves were regarded as subhuman in that they were excluded from “freedom” which only applied to “freemen”. And yet they were regarded as human with respect to propagation.”
This is absurd. They never used the term “subhuman.” They were regarded as uncivilized or savages. That is not the same thing. An uncivilized person was viewed by some as having the ability to become civilized through education and training.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “So if the word fascist is to be used in postings it clearly should be used to describe the Revolutionaries, whose self declared liberalism was nothithing more than fascism – ie rule by a new elite or Master Race.”
Fascism is not rule by a master race, but even if it was, our founding fathers never expressed any such thing. By race, they were the same as the Brits. In terms of freedom, they were breaking away from the idea that people born to nobility were superior to those born to the lower classes. When Jefferson wrote that all men were created equal, he was conveying a concept about individual rights outlined by Locke. Locke wrote, “A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.” Such thinking is contrary to the more modern notion of fascism, that individual rights are less important than that of the State, and that individuals ought to sacrifice even their own life for the good of the collective.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “This proves the hipocrisy of the Revolutionary Cause at the time of inception. It was a device to illegally seize power by a few privileged Americans bent on the abuse of the Rights of Man. Whilst this notion infuriates many Americans today, it is the truth of what happened.”
Ridiculous. Ben Franklin had 16 brothers and sisters. His formal education ended when he was 10. He was in the workforce at age 12. He had to write under a pseudonym in order to convey his ideas. His brother was arrested and jailed for writing unflattering words about the governor. You consider this a privileged American bent on the abuse of the rights of man? Your words get people upset because they are lies, not truth. You call our respected leaders hypocrites and criminals and deceivers of our nation, based upon false information, and you think we are supposed to be happy at your words?
Your primary mistake is in basing logic upon interpretations of data rather than acknowledging other ways of interpreting the same data. Logic requires firm premises and assumptions in order to lead to correct conclusions.
ninianpeckitt – your grasp of history is as abysmal as your grasp of U.S. Government. Blacks have fought for the US in every war the U.S. has been involved in. Several blacks were involved in the Battle of Bunker Hill (also known as Breed’s Hill).
I am not sure we should even take advise from a country that has not had a ruling English monarch since 1603. Finally, the German House of Windsor is getting some outside blood. You have that twit Charles next in line to the throne. Remember, he is the one who wanted to be a tampon?
I’m decidedly unimpressed by the responses which have dodged the points I have raised. Because what I am saying is right and supported by events. And you all know it.
We shall now have to wait and see how America handles this difficult problem of Individual Freedom vs National Freedom and Security.
And I would like to bet that the USA will follow in the footsteps of David Cameron, amid much wailing and the gnashing of teeth in protest about something that never really happened in the first place.
ninianpeckitt – things in the US can kinda happen like England, but mostly not. After you read American Government for Dummies it will all become clear.
Paul Schulte: it’s not about “how things kinda happen” it’s about the inception and unshakable belief in the fiction of the rhetoric and what makes Americans tick. The rights of the individual and stuff everyone else. It’s about how the country has not and cannot survive like this in the real world, and how there is absolute refusal to recognise the truth of your history. It’s about a veto on any criticism of your checkered past and an unshakable belief by Americans that America embodies all that is good and nothing that was evil.
It’s about delusion and the American Dream.
ninianpeckitt – if you actually knew what you were talking about, I would be willing to debate these issues with you. However, your ignorance is overwhelming. You cannot understand the American Dream if you do not understand what we are dreaming about.
To Paul C Schulte: am just relaying the facts and correcting you when you make a false statement, which is pretty much most of the time. And I verify my statements.
ninianpeckitt – you have yet to verify squat. I have yet to see a citation backing you up. And don’t use Wikipedia.
To Paul Schulte: an interesting link.
Dunmore’s Regiment of a few hundred volunteers was the first of an estimated 12,000 blacks who served with British forces in North America during the Revolutionary War.
So it wasn’t just a few hundred that joined up and it would appear that General Washington got his Lend Lease Army of Black Slaves who had to fight for that privilege of human bondage.
If this is Freedom you can keep it.
The Continental Army of Washington was 25% of black Americans by the way. Many of them were former slaves and also free blacks and they were fully integrated in the Army. The view put forward by ninian is so skewed that it is worthless since it omits a good part of our history to butress his falsification of history and that is more liike the Stalin school of falsification than any rational measure of history.The black slaves who fought under Washington got their freedom, unlike those who fought for the British. I think that is a noteworthy difference, especially to those concerned. The greatness of Washington is that he changed his views over the course of the Revolution and established a stable functioning government, in addition to showing his fellow slaveholders HOW to solve the problem of slavery by his own example. That was done FAR before the Brits decided to outllaw it and before most of the states did. In short, his work was progressive on all fronts, and contributed mightily to the advance of freedom. That is the only true measure of any person, or country, did they advance or retard the cause of human freedom? I think I will keep the freedom that I and my ancestors foiught for. Others can follow dictators and authoritarians if they like and offer rationalizations for it.
randyjet
That’s the good thing about freedom. It includes the freedom of the victors to re-write history.
The thrust of my argument is philosophical and is primarily focused on what freedom is. I have used history to illustrate the confusion of colonial thinking of the time and an inability to translate this into the modern world.
It is quite clear that I have failed miserably in my attempts to make readers think originally on this subject, but there again that is not really surprising. You have to make this jig saw puzzle fit as the ethos of the country depends on it. So keep on reshaping the pieces and keep sharpening the scissors.
ninianpeckitt – if your purpose was to have us think about political thought during Colonial times then you needed to preface your argument to show that. Your failure is in your ability to state an argument and defend it.
BTW, there was nothing philosophical in any of your writings.
ninianpeckitt – it is estimated that an additional 8000 fought for the Continentals. BTW, Dunsmore was defeated which put his policy in disrepute in London.
Dieter, in fact Washington did offer freedom to slaves who fought for one year. He also freed all of his slaves in his will, gave them land and a pension. The Brits did not know what to do with the black slaves who had fought for them, so they sold them BACK INTO SLAVERY in Jamaica. Try telling the whole story.
randyjet: This is yet another piece of disinformation and the truth shows the ruthlessness of the American Patriots and the society they advocated.
The freed loyalist slaves who could be evacuated remained free.
The loyalists who were not able to escape with the British suffered a horrible fate. They were sold back into slavery and treated harshly for trying to gain freedom in the first place.
We can all argue the case to etnernity but there is no possible argument to justify the inhuman behaviour of the Founding Father’s and American Patriots even by the standards of the time. They presided over one of the biggest Programmes of Disinformation in history.
ninianpeckitt – Disinformation? Like the number the Tudors did on Richard III? Or Cromwell did on Anne Boylen?
Paul C Schulte: Richard III Tudors etc here was certainly disinformation as with all politics. But evidence has recently surfaced that Richard probably had the boy princes killed. Henry VII and his wife (the boys sister) attended the trial of the alleged killer (Richard”s servant) brought to justice over another felony and they sat through the whole thing. This is very unusual and is the among gun, according to Richard Starkey the historian.
Deception has always been rife. But when it is identified it needs to be admitted. This is something you are unable to do. I don’t care what people think about the UK but you care what people think about America. That’s the rub. And that’s what keeps your myth going no matter what is revealed
Dieter Heymann wrote: “The abolition of the importation of slaves to Virginia by Jefferson and later to the entire US under Monroe had only a marginal effect on the persistence of slavery. In fact it triggered the new abomination known as “slave breeding”. After all, slaves can have children and they did. Many a male slave owner helped.”
You may not think facts are important when spinning a narrative on history, but they are. The abolition of the importation of slaves in the U.S. happened with the “Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807.” It was enacted March 2, 1807 under President Jefferson, not President Monroe. It went into effect under President Jefferson in January 1, 1808, the first date allowed by the Constitution. The Act came about because of President Jefferson’s annual speech to Congress on December 2, 1806 where he denounced the slave trade as a violation of human rights and called upon Congress to criminalize it.
This act did not trigger “slave breeding.” Virginia already had more slaves than they needed and were exporting them.
davidm2575: But in 1776 the facts are regardless of interpretation that a new Country declared it’s own independence based on a foundation of fictitious freedom and liberty.
ninianpeckitt wrote: “in 1776 the facts are regardless of interpretation that a new Country declared it’s own independence based on a foundation of fictitious freedom and liberty.”
What you claim here are not facts. These are your interpretations. You simply declare it fictitious because our Constitution protected the slave trade and did not end slavery.
The concept then was that liberty and freedom meant government should not act as the government under King George III acted toward us. He was a tyrant. That is not a foundation of fiction. The real facts, as opposed to your imaginary ones, are outlined in our Declaration of Independence.
The Facts:
========
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
davidm2575:
The treatment of Negro slaves was subhuman. They were not included in Freedom and Liberty and were treated with great and legalised brutality. This is subhuman by any standards. The Founding fathers who knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that what they were advocating was not freedom and liberty for all. It doesn’t really matter what model of freedom they used. It was still wrong. Just as wrong as to suggest that the Sun orbits the Earth, and just as sailing off the end of a Flat Earth.
So it is just plain wrong. Period.
Fascism is a term is usually used pejoratively by political opponents to describe parties of the far right with ideological similarities to, or roots in, 20th century fascist movements.
As a form of radical nationalism there is a loose resemblance with respect to the priority of Individual Rights and Freedoms advocated at the expense of a Free Society. This is the Choice that America has to make Individual Freedom vs a Free Society. There is some reluctance to discuss this, because it is a concept probably not taught in schools. The former will favour the development of a fascist culture which features autarky. We have seen that autarky features strongly in the thinking of American bloggers. I think this is alarming.
So some of the ingredients are there.
The comments I have posted are intended to encourage readers to question what they have been taught. Benjamin Franklin’s personal history is not relevant. What he wrote however is relevant and it is my case that it is full of contradictions and has saddled the country with a system that is very different from that expressed and cannot be implemented in the real world. I appreciate that this may be upsetting. But it is true and I have given ample escape routes for arguments to modify views.
My primary mistake you say is in: “basing logic upon interpretations of data”. I would say this is not a mistake it is analysis.
You are advocating “acknowledging other ways of interpreting the same data” because this is the only way you can prove your case to your satisfaction. In other words, you are unable to examine the case with an open mind in case you reach a contrary conclusion. You have reached your verdict already without appraising the case in accordance to the conditions that you are imposing on me.
In other words, you are right come what may, and correct despite anything anyone else might say. And therein lies the problem. Because if you were wrong you have no capacity to accept this and alter your position.
I am not suggesting that the U.S. case is fictitious because our Constitution protected the slave trade and did not end slavery. But I am saying that this is a significant factor and that it is contradictory.
King George III was not a tyrant. There is no evidence to support this allegation. He was a constitutional monarch under the terms of the Act of Settlement of 1701 and had no authority to influence foreign policy. It was the intransigence of Lord North, prime minister, that led to war with the colonists.
At that time, the American colonists were demanding a level of representation that did not exist in England. The English experience of a wider suffrage had collapsed into the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell and his military regime, following the execution of King Charles I.
Democracy, as demanded by the rebels, was unknown in Europe and Lord North couldn’t imagine how such a governmental system would work. He wasn’t alone, although there were a few English parliamentarians who were pressing for wider suffrage, and it came 50 years later. The idea of “We the people…” was as alien to most politicians at the time as we would view “We the rich and famous…” now. Quite simply, this was not a basis for good government in a fair and rational society (except in USA perhaps, where rich and famous seem to be the main criteria for election to high office at least since Theodore Roosevelt).
King George III had very little interest in politics – and no powers over fiscal or military policies. He believed his advisors because that’s what the constitution demanded of him. He did ask Lord North if there wasn’t perhaps a better way and was told that the American rebellion was the beginning of an anti-monarchist revolution. This was the 18th century equivalent of “weapons of mass destruction” and equally a cynical lie, but it stoked the fears of most people at the time and gave Lord North the mandate he required. I have advised on this many times and it is selectively ignored, because it does not help the American case. Nevertheless it is true.
All empires collapse because the burden of administration eventually becomes too great for the home country. This was the case with the empires of the Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Moghuls, Spanish and then British.
There may be a moral case against Empire, but the administrative case seems to be overwhelming. There is a lesson here, perhaps, for the USA as it grows its empire into other continents. There can be no doubt that the English and British colonies in North America, Africa, India and Australasia would eventually have become independent without bloodshed, if British governments had been prepared to sense the mood at the time.
All the evidence is that George III was a kindly and cultured renaissance gentleman. Everyone who met him liked him, even if they disagreed with the existence of the Hanoverian monarchy in England. His father George II had ridden into battle at Dettingen in 1743, but George III had no interest in war or politics. He wanted to be loved as the father of the nation and, by and large, that’s how he was perceived. He reigned for 50 years and was loved by his subjects and unfairly maligned in America.
Even in the American colonies, blame for the military intervention didn’t fall on King George until a new constitution was written.
Americans remember George III as “mad King George” because it suits their actions in forming a Republic. There were much better reasons to throw off the British yoke but the king’s apparent madness was (is) easier to quote as explanation.
It is interesting that the intellectually-reduced American philosophy of representative government, as later improved and developed by the Constitution writers, has been quoted and admired by other political thinkers including Marat, Robespierre and Danton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Proudhon, Engels, Marx, Trotsky and Hitler. All of these came to offer explanations and justifications for tyranny based on early colonial dissatisfactions.
King George III was an irrelevance but a thoroughly nice and gentle human being, struggling with a serious illness, of which his advisors and critics took advantage.
The issue of most concern in the modern world is the unshakable belief in the political spin of 1776 which was forged to facilitate the transfer of power to a new elite. The New Society was based on political spin rather than Truth and the American People have been manipulated ever since.
I will change no minds in my blogs, but some readers will hopefully be encouraged to think for themselves.
Ninian Peckitt wrote: “The treatment of Negro slaves was subhuman. They were not included in Freedom and Liberty and were treated with great and legalised brutality. This is subhuman by any standards. The Founding fathers who knew exactly what they were doing. They knew that what they were advocating was not freedom and liberty for all.”
I have not seen any evidence that Negro slaves were treated as subhuman by our founding fathers. Thomas Jefferson tried to include aspersions against the slave trade in the Declaration of Independence, but Congress took it out. He did push for freedom and liberty for the slaves, but the solution was problematic with them because they were not civilized. It seemed to him that the answer would be more along the lines of sending them to Sierra Leone. He hoped they could take what they learned here and create a civilized society there. You seem to accuse them of duplicity and criminal activity by rebelling against Britain, but I do not see what evidence you point to in substantiating your argument. It seems like you just make the claim and then complain about how others are too close minded to accept your claim. What evidence do you have that our founding fathers were duplicitous? You talk about them as elitists, but then when I mention Ben Franklin’s background to illustrate a contradiction in your claim, you wave your hand and dismiss it as irrelevant. It is like facts don’t matter to you, only your preconceived notion is what is important.
I look at facts. If you can show me in any of their writings how they were duplicitous and unconcerned about establishing the principles of law and government expounded upon by John Locke, William Blackstone, etc., I will give it some serious attention. Thus far, I see interpretations called facts, and no facts given for analysis. It is all your opinion. You claim that the American ideals of limited government by the consent of the governed never worked and never will work. Do you seriously expect me to accept that without any clear arguments based in facts?
ninianpeckitt – sweet little King George III reigned over a country that led the world in the import-export of slaves.
Paul C Schulte: sweet King George was a constitutional monarch and had no say in foreign policy. By all accounts he was a very nice person and well loved. The same cannot be said for Parliament and Lord North. At that time was pre Wilberforce and pro slavery and this was just as much an abomination.
America had the opportunity to rid itself of this scourge once and for all with their Revolution and blew it. My objection is that you claimed to be a land of Rights Freedom and Liberty and this was anything but true. It was a barefaced lie. What makes it worse is that everyone knows it was a lie. I clubbing the leaders.
ninianpeckitt – George III was just as guilty of slavery as the Americans. Actually, pretty much every one had a piece of the slavery action.
King George III owned no slaves unlike George Washington and the founding fathers. This is yet another example of how you continue to misrepresent the facts.
ninianpeckitt – the British were responsible for shipping slaves to the colonies. The Triangular Trade was a product of the British. Even when England abolished slavery in 1833, it did not abolish it everywhere in the Empire. Slavery was still legal in India. That was very naughty of George and his ministers.
Paul C Shulte: Yes Britain was very active in the Slave Trade. And this is appalling. But she didn’t declare unilateral Independence and proclaim Freedom and Liberty for all as the Americans did whilst still retaining slavery. This is hipocracy. You know this is my criticism and you continue to ignore it out of embarrassment.
King George was not a slaver and had no political power as a constitutional monarch.
I use Wikipedia because it is the source of the weak-willed.
ninianpeckitt – what does George III need slaves for, he has a whole fu**ing country working for him.
Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits said: “Give me a child until the age of seven, and I will give you the man”. There’s a lot of truth in this.
Did he get Arnold Schwarzenegger or Pee Wee Herman?
—-
Niniman,
If’ you’ll take note, I express or quote the literal words of the Founders, many of whom you will see portrayed as a visual preamble at the top, beginning or outset of the Turley blog
(there must be no meaning inherent in that presentation, however, as posters have been corrected and severely admonished by this site’s singular, unequaled and bizarrely arrogant in-house pedant, that anything preambular has no meaning and is depicted, written and sited precisely to be ignored and to have absolutely no weight or bearing on any and all subsequent prosecution of the matter, related documents, situation or circumstances considered, proposed or created).
forgotwhoiam – Ignatius Loyola probably did NOT say that. It was attributed to him by Voltaire.
ninian
Plato’s cave, it’s all about becoming. One never becomes. The one main ingredient that hinders the US from becoming more of its ideals is that it is stuck on a war footing. On a war footing it is next to impossible to venture into the future. One is on the defensive and relies on the past and ideals instead of the future and ideals. The majority of this post is focused on the past, words, interpreted for conditions that don’t completely exist and ignoring conditions that do exist. All in all the release from a war footing was the best thing that ever happened to Great Britain, France, Germany, etc. Imagine the US unencumbered with the extremes.
We can’t possibly have a State and the Capital of our country named after that slave driver George Washington – every reference to Washington is going to have to go. And that Washington Monument has to go as well as the picture of Washington on the $1 bill and the Quarter. Jackson’s got to go from the $20 and Jefferson has got to go from the nickel and the Jefferson Memorial must be bulldozed. I suggest that Washington State be renamed The State of Obama and the nation’s capital be renamed Clinton, D.C.
Mark Mitchell: There is a selective amnesia about all this business. You have to accept that what happened in 1776 was just a first step and the revolutionary rhetoric took hundreds of years to be slowly implemented. And it is still an ongoing process. To “black ball” specific individuals is mischievous, divisive and an attempt to enforce the political correctness of today on the past. The whole point of the Declaration of Independence is that it was revolutionary – yes, politically incorrect, in the eyes of the Loyalists.
Why go and spoil a Good Thing? These people were probably little different from their colleagues.
ninianpeckitt – that quote is attributed to Loyola. There is no proof that he said it.
What’s the over/under on a tweet length post from Isaac or ninianpeckitt?
American facts:
The American Founders provided freedom in the form of a restricted-vote “…republic, if you can keep it” per Ben Franklin. Criteria was applied to the right to vote I 1789. The Founders never intended for a vote of the working masses. The Founders knew they would corrupt the republic by voting themselves largesse.
Ben Franklin, 1789, we gave you a “…republic, if you can keep it.”
Ben Franklin, 2015, we gave you a “…republic, if you can take it back.”
What the Founders provided can be best demonstrated and summed up, in common parlance, by substituting the word for every individual’s “endeavor of choice” for the word “religion” in the First Amendment, as follows:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of (your word here), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Freedom is what the American Founders gave Americans.
Karl Marx gave us:
welfare, food stamps, social services, affirmative action, forced busing, “Fair Housing,” quotas, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Obamacare, HAMP, HARP, HUD, HHS, Education, Labor, FHA, rent control, “hate crime,” an ineligible imposter fraudulently acting as President, IRS, Federal Reserve Board, floated currency, $20trillion national debt., $200trillion unfunded entitlements, etc.,
ALL of which is communistic “redistribution of wealth” as unconstitutional violations of private property rights. Private property taken from one man and given to another is confiscation for redistribution. Private property taken to pay to operate government is taxation.
Freedom and self-reliance is what the Founding Fathers gave their “posterity.”
forgotwhoiam:
You never got freedom and still don’t have it. But you think you have it. No that’s wrong. You are convinced you have it and put forward long and convoluted arguments.
This is clever marketing.
This is the most perplexing thing of all. You are absolutely convinced that you have these things and the rest of the world knows with an equal conviction that it is just not true. It is nowhere near being true – and there just isn’t anything that anyone can say to encourage you to think about what you are really saying.
Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits said: “Give me a child until the age of seven, and I will give you the man”. There’s a lot of truth in this.
ninian
Hind sight belongs to anyone. Firstly Hitler was not the most effective military aspect of Germany in WW2. He was the political aspect. His generals were the most effective military asset and if they had had free rein, North Africa would have fallen before the US landed. Imagine if a million of the five million troops that were sent into Russia were diverted to North Africa. Russia would have been subjected to a pincer attack from the East, south to the oil fields and from North Africa, north. There would not have been a Great Britain from which to stage the devastating aerial bombing on Germany’s industrial war machine. There would not have been an Italian campaign. Germany was defeated primarily by the USSR but fighting a front in Italy, Northern France, and aerial bombing helped make that the case. In the end it was Hitler that lost the war for Germany. Churchill was instrumental by being there while Hitler screwed up and taking advantage of Hitler’s stopping at the channel. However, had the British government been lead by someone else it would have been more than likely to have capitulated, especially with how the East was decimated by the Japanese so easily, i.e. Singapore. The US in the Philippines and the British in Singapore illustrate the abilities of the enemy and the lack of ability of the allies.
Churchill was an imperialist and from our place in history it is almost impossible to respect that. However he has been blamed for Gallipoli which was a brilliant idea and, if Russia had not screwed up so badly with its revolution and all that, would have permitted the allies to create a route to resupply Russia as well as to encircle the enemy. The Gallipoli plan was sound. It was the execution that was wanting. The allies had twice the men but almost the same casualties. When aspects of the Gallipoli plan went as planned the Turks were soundly defeated. However, when support faltered from London and Paris, the plan bogged down. The Western front was locked down. Another hundred thousand men would have seen the campaign through to success. Churchill was for the campaign and against the withdrawal. The failure lies with the withdrawal. The Ottoman empire even with the help of the Germans was lacking in most aspects of military hardware, a navy, heavy mobile artillery, and men. The allies had command of the sea and could have mounted landings elsewhere and in support of their positions.
Churchill’s main contribution as the greatest leader of the 20th Century was that he never gave up, even when saddled with the blame of Gallipoli.
Isaac: I agree with much of what you say. But the decision not to make peace with Germany was the death knell for the British Empire. And this was the very thing Churchill wanted to preserve and he never anticipated this. He was an Imperialist. That’s not to say that capitulation was the answer. The British may have a lot of bad traits, but they are Stubborn and Principled and generally stand up to bullies, despite the fact they have done a fair bit of bullying themselves. I don’t mean to detract from Churchill’s wartime leadership and charisma. He was in the right place at the right time for the job at hand. And his performance is regarded as magnificent. I’m just saying that all is not quite as it seems.
He suffered a humiliating defeat in the 1945 election which must have been crushing. He was a very odd person and during WWII had a fixation on his ancestor believing that it was now his destiny to follow in Marlborough’s footsteps to lead Britain to a New Greatness, at a time when it was clear that the Empire was now an anachronism and would not last much longer.
It was all about Him really. What He could do. How the country needed Him. And yet he was a man with really serious flaws and it is amazing to see how he bounced back after more than one political ruination. Quite remarkable really. But if victory had not been secured at the 2nd Battle of El Alamein by Montgomery, he would have been finished. He was a Gambler and frequently miscalculated. He “picked himself up, dust himself off, and started all over again”. Many times. But when he succeeded in something it was always something BIG and he was a master of blowing his own trumpet. He was never really trusted by his colleagues who regarded him as an opportunist and headline seeker. But there was no other bulldog quite like him in the pack. And when he had a success, this generated admiration. But he was not revered by the Unions, he was hated by the now independent Irish, refused to give up India and frankly lied to the Australian Government about their troop movements in the Far East.
He obstructed plans for D Day because he was terrified that the carnage of 1914-1918 would be repeated, even though the Germans had demonstrated that history had changed with the fall of France in 6 weeks. And France at the time had one of the biggest Armies in the world, but were led by donkeys.
I think he was very skilful in cultivating his relationship with FDR but I think that after the Battle of Britain, Britain was really saved by the German invasion of Russia in 1941.
In 1945 Churchill ordered “Operation Unthinkable”: two related plans of a conflict between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, which I think George Patton would have welcomed – especially the offensive option. So he was definitely a Hawk.
Sure he was a Great Briton and he made a major contribution for Freedom. No doubt about it.
But he was also seriously flawed and didn’t learn very much from his errors. He suffered from nightmares for years after Gallipoli which should have ended his political career for good. In a meritocracy that would have been the case. But at a time of Empire things were different than they are today.
And a great price was paid to fuel his ego….. Was it worth it? Of course it was.
But the problems in Germany could have been prevented; it could have been possible to prevent those with ideas of perverted individual freedom from hijacking a country. If Hitler had been stopped early on he would have been deposed. There was a plan to assassinate Hitler just before WWII but after Munich and the Fall of France he could do no wrong in the eyes of the German Public and the conspirators vanished. So Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper generated an overwhelming ironic support for the Fuhrer, and the rest is history.
In the modern world it is foolish to think that the same things can never happen. And to give power to minority groups at the expense of the majority is a prescription for National Disaster. Those who do not advocate any responsibility and accountability linked to freedom are promoting great danger. It is so easy to discuss issues from a theoretical basis, but sometimes lawmakers can be too clever and a departure from common sense always ends up with conflict.
We have really serious issues to address if any form of democracy is to prevail. The system lends itself to abuse. And enemies of democracy are able to use this to their advantage. Why do they want to do this? Because they want a shift in power, in the same way that there was a shift in power in 1603, 1688, 1776, 1789, 1861, 1914, 1939, 1941, 1950 etc
I believe all of this is about the acquisition of Power. I think Freedom and Liberty are terms used for this purpose. I say this because I am cynical and I have never seen an honest politician. I think the American People are just as downtrodden as others in “democracies” I am just startled that many of you don’t see this. I think that if I have learned anything new on these blogs it is the passion that really decent Americans have for these ideals are real – and yet the reality is just smoke and mirrors.
I just hope you don’t throw it all away, like the Germans did…..
“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs….There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who do not want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
— Booker T. Washington
Enter. . . . Al Sharpton
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Slavery was not a “tremendous” evil. In its original form, which included freeing slaves every 7 years, it actually was an economic and judicial answer to poverty.
To the person who wrote this: Why don’t you sell a few of your kids, grandkids, or other family members into modern day slavery? Maybe they can go to Qatar or Duabi and work for a few years. Better yet, why don’t you go?? You could write to us after you’re freed in seven years and let us know how it went.
old nurse wrote: “Why don’t you sell a few of your kids, grandkids, or other family members into modern day slavery?”
People who do not commit crimes and who pay their way do not need to enter into an obligation like slavery.
Your answer to these social problems is to allow people to become homeless and to wander aimlessly and lazily through the downtown areas of all our major cities. You cruelly badger them to go somewhere else, pass laws that criminalize their begging, and arrest them for sleeping on a park bench after 10 pm. When they get mugged because they have no shelter and security, they go to the ER of the hospitals on the taxpayer’s dime, then are released without money or clothes onto the streets to repeat the cycle. Such a way of treating humanity is far worse than the way Thomas Jefferson treated his slaves. Then you sit on your high horse and complain that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves as if that fact in itself makes him an immoral criminal, but you ignore how cruelly you treat the poor and mentally ill with your system of prisons that criminalize and oppress the poor and uneducated.