The Founders of The United States, authors of the Constitution, and several presidents who followed in their hallowed footsteps, right up to the Vice President under Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and the Hero of the U.S. Civil War, U.S. Grant, owned slaves. How could people such as these be revered as the paragons and patriarchs of individual rights? It's beyond me.
George Washington owned more than 200 slaves
Thomas Jefferson owned more than 100 slaves
James Madison owned and sold slaves all his life
James Monroe owned 30-40 slaves
Andrew Jackson owned about 160 slaves
Martin Van Buren owned at least one slave
William Henry Harrison had several slaves
John Tyler had slaves
James K. Polk had 15 slaves
Zachary Taylor owned more than 100 slaves
Andrew Johnson owned 8 slaves
Ulysses S. Grant freed his slaves
What's your opinion? Are we to believe that these men were ahead of their time with regards freedom of speech and religion yet bought and sold black Africans? I can't reconcile that. Rather I think they were as self-interested and unscrupulous as our present day leaders. Which makes more sense to you?
Please leave a comment,
Mikeb302000:
ReplyDeleteRe: U.S. Grant, he was the hero of the Southern War of Treachery, not the Revolutionary War. Small error, but one that some people might seize upon as proof that you'e a LIAR!!
I know that you're a smart feller, but sometimes I gotta wonder how you can make such leaps of logic.
We've got tractors and automated seed drills and harvesters and gins and such AND we're able to convince much of the U.S. workforce that sub-living wage, benefit-free jobs are all they should have AND U.S. based companies export a lot of jobs (and whatever social responsibility attaches to them) to countries who outlaws labor unions. So, we don't need no stinkin' slaves (although it might be a nice "perk" for the 1%ers)!
Now, gunz, otoh trigger finger, we gotz to haz. Cuz, you never know when some detachment of Lobster Backs or injuns might come a sneakin' through the woods and wreak havoc with the crops, our wimmenfolk or our quiet enjoyment of that brand new 84" plasma teevee that we got at Wal-Mart.
You're so silly, sometimes!
MikeB,
ReplyDeleteYou just need to be more of a glass-half-full optimist. When Great Britain was in charge, they had slavery over all of the colonies. When the revolution was over and the U.S. established, only half the nation was slave owning and a limit was set to end the importation of slaves.
How about that cherry picking though. You give us a picture of Ben Franklin but fail to mention that he owned zero slaves. In fact, half of the delegates signing the Declaration of Independence were not slave holders yet you failed to mention them. Finally of the ones you do list, almost half of them weren't even alive during the revolution and a couple were infants so how exactly were they "founding fathers"?
Should we tear down the pyramids because they were built by slaves? How about the great Mosques? While you are at it, anything Roman will need demonized and destroyed as well. Tear it all down--its evil.
Slavery is wrong but it happened. Forgetting it failing to learn from it is wrong as well. But then so is persecuting those that lived centuries ago by judging them to our current standards--very few could ever pass that judgement.
You claim capital punishment is wrong. Does that mean that every despot, judge, king, bishop and anyone else of any authority that has ever passed such a sentence is evil and any acts created by them or in their name should be forgotten or destroyed? Guess the Magna Carta should never be looked to either then.
Slavery was wrong but at the time it was accepted in society even so. You cannot dismiss the good that those men did simply because of the time and circumstance that they were born.
How could they have held their beautiful ideas while at the same time owning slaves? They were human. They lived in an age in which slavery was generally seen as normal. They did have misgivings about slavery, and their ideas led to its end. I honor them for what they created.
ReplyDeleteMikeB, I've corrected that apparent error; I hope you don't mind. I'm sure what you MEANT to write was civil war.
ReplyDeleteHere is an interesting set of data which supports your observations:
"Of the first five presidents, four owned slaves. All four of these owned slaves while they were president.
Of the next five presidents (#6-10), four owned slaves. Only two of them owned slaves while they were president.
Of the next five presidents (#11-15), two owned slaves. Both of these two owned slaves while they were president.
Of the next three presidents (#16-18) two owned slaves. neither of them owned slaves while serving as president.
The last president to own slaves while in office was the twelfth president, Zachary Taylor (1849-1850).
The last president to own slaves at all was the eighteenth president, Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877).
So twelve of our presidents owned slaves and eight of them owned slaves while serving as president."
http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps.htm
SOME of our founding fathers were opposed to slavery, mirroring the difference of opinion, largely regional, of this nation from the very beginning.
We need to respect the people in our history for what they did right, and not presume that respects extends to every aspect of their lives, or every word they ever uttered or wrote.
When you acknowledge their failings and shortcomings and that they were sometimes very wrong on things, that doesn't diminish their accomplishments, not at all. Rather it makes an even starker contrast to appreciate what they did right, what they did well.
To be critical in examining the words of the founding fathers, or anyone else, is part of critical thinking rather than stupid, blind, unquestioning authoritarianism.
Presidents did not and do not write or speak infallibly ex-cathedra. Never have,never will.
That is an authoritarian form of thinking that is typified on the right by RWA - right wing authoritarianism.
So....what are the three hallmarks of Right wing Authoritarianism? (wikipedia)
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.
Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one's society should also be required to adhere to these norms.[3]"
Yup, MikeB; you've identified correctly the right wing authoritarianism among the gun rights crowd.
You also see it among the right wing candidates, presidential and otherwise.
They just HATE critical thinking and critical questioning of their authority and assumptions.
But hey -that just makes doing those things all the more fun.
Dog Gone,
ReplyDeleteRight wing authoritarianism--yet another example of how psychologists have decided what we're supposed to be and label anything else as an illness. Sarcasm aside, the point is that yes, there are some people who feel the need to attack anything that differs from the system that they've bought into. Not all of us gun owners are like that, though. In fact, I'd say that most of us aren't.
The message that I take away from this article is that we must always lean toward freedom--freedom as broadly defined and as broadly applied as we can bring ourselves to accept. In fact, freedom should hurt a little, just as I used to be told in church that giving money should hurt a little, otherwise it's not enough. So far, in America, we've done a remarkable job of this.
Greg C wrote:
ReplyDelete"Right wing authoritarianism--yet another example of how psychologists have decided what we're supposed to be and label anything else as an illness."
Read the definition I quoted AGAIN Greg:
Right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) is a personality and ideological variable studied in political, social, and personality psychology. It is defined by three attitudinal and behavioral clusters which correlate together:[1][2]
I don't see any word in this definition which uses any word that means SICKNESS. But if my vocabulary is somehow deficient, please identify which word or words mean sickness here.
Rather it identifies a pattern of behavior, and of thinking (or more precisely NOT thinking, if you define critical thinking as questioning.)
I did not say - nor did MikeB either - that every pro-gunner is this way. It is however quite typical of the rightwing - look at any of the current crop of GOP candidates for president as an example. And it DOES tend to be a characteristic of the pro-gunners as well, where those two groups overlap.
What I wrote, and what MikeB observed, was that it is a common phenomena on the right. I can back that up with one of my 'data dumps' of web sites and other sources if you like, because MikeB was correct. This DOES typify the thinking of a large segment of the gun-rights crowd. It has been evident here over the course of my time with this blog, which has been less than a year; I'm confident a perusal of the archives before my arrival would bring up many more instances.
But MikeB did not say EVERY pro-gun person. But it is true of MANY of them.
A perfect example was the argument by one of the commenters here that Jefferson wasn't writing to his nephew about exercise when he mentioned carrying a gun on a walk, when clearly the context showed that as the subject; the Monticello historical site web site showed exercise as the subject, and other Jefferson scholars show that to be about exercise.
But the pro-gunners get hysterical that it is NOT about exercise. It is about Thomas Jefferson telling everyone of us to always carry guns, and because Jefferson co-authored both the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution, that was what he meant and what we all should do as good patriots. Yup unhun.
The hell it is. THAT was a perfect example of what MikeB was describing.in his post here.
Dog Gone,
ReplyDeleteAgain, you quibble with my minor point and ignore the main idea. What about my principle that we must always favor freedom over control with regard to individual rights? Under that principle, slavery would not have existed, women would have had equal rights as men, and gun owners would have nothing to worry about.
"Slavery was wrong but at the time it was accepted in society even so. You cannot dismiss the good that those men did simply because of the time and circumstance that they were born.
ReplyDeleteNovember 21, 2011 3:48 PM'
I'm pretty sure that the fact that a number of the "founding fathers" had slaves was not the point of the post. The point of the post was that the same people who owned slaves were those who wrote the 2nd Amendment. Shit happens, things change except, apparently, the anachronism of the 2nd Amendment.
But, no, it seems that you can admit that times and circumstances that might warrant something 200 years ago no longer apply. Thanks for admitting that your attachment to guns is stronger than your attachment to slavery even if it's no more justifiable.
I was born after the relevant war, so I've never been attached to slavery. My attachment to guns is as strong as my attachment to books and, in one important way, for the same reason.
ReplyDeleteThanks Dog Gone, you probably saved me much more than a [sic] attack.
ReplyDeleteDC - slavery was ended with an Amendment to the Constitution. By rule of law, if you want to change the 2nd Amendment, then you need to pass another Amendment to the Constitution. Get working on that and let me know when Congress passes an Amendment for the states to ratify.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteActually, it might be good if this crowd would try that. They'd be in for a big shock. Even if the amendment got out of committee and could manage to get a two-thirds vote of both houses, I really can't see thirty-eight states supporting such rubbish.
I love the way that gunzloonz like to babble about how there will NEVER be a change in the law that will limit or prohibit ownership of gunz. At the same time, however, they go pantshittingKKKrazzee anytime a sane, rational approach to lowering the rates of gun crime is proposed.
ReplyDeleteAnd, if, GOD forbid, their darkest nightmare of an amendment or federal edict was passed or enacted, a great number of them would likely become instant criminalz.
democommie wrote:
ReplyDeleteI love the way that gunzloonz like to babble about how there will NEVER be a change in the law that will limit or prohibit ownership of gunz. At the same time, however, they go pantshittingKKKrazzee anytime a sane, rational approach to lowering the rates of gun crime is proposed.
I don't see a federal amendment in the near future modifying the 2nd amendment; far more likely is that the inconsistencies of Heller with all the preceding case law will be corrected in a future SCOTUS decision.
There have been some notably bad legal decisions by SCOTUS that were later undone, notably the Dredd Scott case.
And, if, GOD forbid, their darkest nightmare of an amendment or federal edict was passed or enacted, a great number of them would likely become instant criminalz.
My concern is the gun lunatics who would actually go out and start shooting up the country. We have more to fear from the far right militias than most other sources for insurrection or attacks.
My reason for lacking fear, while at the same time keeping my eyes open, is that the laws that you propose can be stopped. We will stop them, so long as we're paying attention.
ReplyDeleteJim says, "...if you want to change the 2nd Amendment..."
ReplyDeleteChanging it might not be necessary. If the Supreme Court had had a one-person difference back during the Heller vote, we'd be having totally different discussions now.
The Supreme Court is empowered to rule on U.S. law, but that does not make it the final arbiter of rights. As I've said before, our rights are logically prior to the Constitution. That document only ennumerates certain rights that the Founders felt necessary to specify. Most of the time, the Court sides with rights, but sometimes--as in Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Kelo, and Citizens United--it goes astray.
ReplyDeleteThe discussion wouldn't actually be all that different, though. Most states have been making decisions on guns that fall in line with Heller and McDonald, and the current Congress would never consider the kind of gun control that is advocated here.