The right decision was to move forward without slavery when America declared independence.  Maybe we wouldn't be here today if they had. And maybe America would have failed right out of the gate if they did.  We may never know. 

Yep.  Whitey didn't invent slavery, but he did invent the idea of ending it.  The classical liberalism that formed the views of the founding fathers eventually ended slavery.

It wasn't Africans that did that.

Quit playing stupid. America should have ended the practice of slavery post independence. 

I don't disagree, but it is what it is.  It's rarely productive to judge history.

It's also worth mentioning that Monticello was pretty much put out of business by competition from non-slave labor when more people moved into the Charlottesville area.  Jefferson couldn't run the slave operation cheap enough to stay afloat once he had serious competition.

Part of that was his poor business acumen, but part of that is just the raw economics of the thing.  Even back then, slavery didn't really "work."


But what it did do is create a community foothold in certain areas.  By forcing enough people to move to a place, you reach that critical mass to where it will then grow on its own.  You move from subsistence farming where it's pretty much every family for themselves, up to interconnected trade which allows specialization of labor -and thus the middle class- to actually happen.  The plantation model creates the nucleus around which a city can be built.  And then, of course, the plantation eventually fades away once it's economically outpaced.

It's the natural way of things.  I'm not saying slavery was right - it's just how it was done.  And, to be fair, it helped get us all (white, black, everyone) where we are today.

Sure, it's not excusing anything.  And maybe there was another path.  But that's the path our nation took, a lot of people died because of that path, we built a few monuments, and now we hate them.


We only have control over one of those things.  We can choose to stop hating ourselves and each other over things that happened long in the past.

Except if they had even thought about it, there would not have BEEN a United States because many of the States NEVER would have ratified the Constitution if they had attempted it.

You think a fledgling country should have dismantled its economy and I'm the stupid one?

On the line of "Jefferson sucked at business," didn't he want to free his slaves, but was barred by court order because he was so deeply in debt that they would not allow him to give-up the cash value of the assets (the slaves)?

If I were a leftist truly concerned about slavery, I'd work to eliminate its presence in the world today and forget about old monuments.  

"We think of slavery as a practice of the past, an image from Roman colonies or 18th-century American plantations, but the practice of enslaving human beings as property still exists. There are 29.8 million people living as slaves right now, according to a comprehensive new report  issued by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/10/17/this-map-shows-where-the-worlds-30-million-slaves-live-there-are-60000-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.4dfde0cfe8c4

Let's do it. Beat them at their own game.

From another thread:

If you’re in the mass hysteria, recognizing you have all the symptoms of hysteria won’t help you be aware you are in it. That’s not how hallucinations work. Instead, your hallucination will automatically rewrite itself to expel any new data that conflicts with its illusions.

But if you are not experiencing mass hysteria, you might be totally confused by the actions of the people who are. They appear to be irrational, but in ways that are hard to define. You can’t tell if they are stupid, unscrupulous, ignorant, mentally ill, emotionally unstable or what. It just looks frickin’ crazy...

I am just wondering when the SJW's will get around to renaming the 11 states something else?

Good post. Although a meme, that is the most sagacious statement I've seen abridging the left's psychosis ...

Make no mistake.  The first step in the process is to discredit the founders, and then use that argument as a basis for undermining the constitution.

If the founders were "bad people" then the constitution must be bad too.  That's where this is headed.

Looks like the Lincoln Memorial needs a big new plaque front-and-center:

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

If we made the right decisions all the time there would be no need for anyone to incarnate in this shithole to begin with.  

IN

1. True.

2. I would argue that that shows how deeply ingrained the institution of slavery was at the time. They obviously didn't mean to include slaves as equals in the DoI and more clearly did not include them as equals in the Constitution. I seriously doubt that they saw or were able to see a contradiction between their declaration and their practice.

I hadn't heard that.  However, there was a law in Virginia that prevented freeing any slaves who were sick or infirm, under the age of 18, or over the age of 40.

By the time of Jefferson's death, many of his slaves (including Sally Hemmings and Burwell Colbert) were over the age of 40.  I believe there was an exception to the over 40 rule for freedom given in a will, provided that the freed man or woman also be given adequate resources to provide for their own livelihood.  Note that Burwell Colbert was freed in this manner, and given $300 to get his glazing and painting business up and running.

But it wouldn't surprise me if the court prevented the freeing of many slaves, considering the large number which needed to be sold to cover the various debts.


I think for the most part, Jefferson did what he could have done.  He allowed a few slaves to simply walk away if they wanted.  Some he was able to formally free, some were under more of a wink-wink agreement, others were freed upon his death, and others by his daughter later.  I'm not sure there was an ideal solution.

DC schools

You got that right.

I was in Somalia one time, on a vacation-or-something, when some young gentleman on the highway between Mogadishu and Baidoa offered to sell me some young Ethiopian teenaged girls.  He was not proposing a rental or lease deal, but an outright sale.  Somali men, mostly younger, will raid across the Ogaden desert, Mad-Max style, into Ethiopia and kidnap Ethiopian girls into slavery.  The girls are desirable because their sexual bits have not been razored off.  Dude said, by way of enticing the sale, "But they are Christian girls (wink wink) and you know how they are..." Interestingly, the lead salesman had lived for several years in Canada, according to his story.  He spoke better English than me, and way better than a real Canadian.  Their convoy also had khat, and locally-made (organic sustainable) charcoal.  There was probably a load of rPGs under the charcoal, but it was hot, and thats a lot of work to unload, and ain't nobody got time for that.

Well, then you'd be wrong, since there's plenty of evidence of each of the Founders writing against the practice of slavery and speaking of slaves as people, equal in dignity.

For anybody still confused, let's try on a modern metaphor.


Healthcare sucks.  Everyone agrees that it sucks.  It's too expensive, and one of the large reasons is that insurance companies, brokerages, the legal side of things, and other parts form this huge administrative overhead.  If it were actually just patients and healthcare professionals, it would be much more efficient, and much more affordable.  But, we've got millions of people whose jobs rely on "the healthcare system."

It's so big, in fact, that it's a whopping 18% of our GDP.

Each discrete part of healthcare "makes sense" on its own, from a profit interest perspective.  How prices are set and negotiated between hospitals and insurance companies.  How litigation is handled and settled.  How money changes hands in general.

But, from a macro perspective, it's all really fucking stupid.

So, how do you fix it?  You can't just "free all the slaves" with a stroke of a pen.  You can't just shut it all down and kick everyone out.  You'd tank the economy, and put millions out of work at once.

Democrats want to keep everything the same, and just have the government pay for it.  Taxes go up, waste goes up, it's pretty much bad in every conceivable way... but you wouldn't completely tank the economy.
Republicans want to...  I don't even know.  Some sort of hybrid thing where they use medicare to fill the gap, and try to wean the industry off the administrative burdens, but without addressing malpractice...  I guess it's some sort of bullshit pipe dream that will never work either, even if they could agree on what to do, which they can't.

Meanwhile, you've got all these activists, some of whom are willing to be violent, who are screaming for simple solutions (AKA, just give us more free shit) as if such a solution is even remotely practicable.

And, in 30 or 40 years after all the dust settles and the problem is eventually fixed (because America solves every problem - eventually), it'll all get summarized in some middle school textbook as "Barack Obama freed the healthcare" and that will become all anybody knows about it.


OR...  and here's a fuckin crazy thought, right...

Let's say a big war were to happen, and you had a really convenient opportunity to hit the reset button on healthcare policy.  And, let's say doing so would help your side win.  You'd emancipate the shit out of it, wouldn't you?


There are no heroes in history, and politics never really changes.

Nailed it.

"It's just a flag, get over it"

"It's just a flag"

If slavery was legal and institutionalized today, it wouldn't surprise me if most had exactly what you describe.

Ah! But, of course . . . they do! And, apparently, it is legal and institutionalized - only today, the slaves don't know they're slaves!

And tax-paying citizens pick up the tab and are called horrid names should they question it, in any way.

... and a registered Republican

LOL!!!

Couldn't, our GDP at the time depended on it and we had vast debts from the War. Would've been economic suicide.

... and a womanizing, whoremonger

Democrats changing their history of supporting slavery. Period.

I think it's an attempt delegitimize the founding fathers, followed by changing the history books, so upcoming generations will be more susceptible to changing the constitution to something other than it is intended.

I wonder if they are going to alter the LBJ Library to emphasize LBJ's racism...

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/lyndon-johnson-civil-rights-racism

Is there a monument highlighting the fact that Africans captured and sold other africans into slavery? 

I'd kick in a few bucks to see the hurt feelz.

7.5 more years, and then another 8 years with Mike Pence #46

Also promote the fact he was a Republican

I'm aware of the situation and why they did what they did.  Certainly they couldn't have anticipated the outcome.  That said, I wish they would have done it another way. 

It's usually inconvenient to do the right thing. So yes. 

Maybe so.  They were great men, I just wish they could have known how it would turn out once they went down this road. 

And we have vast debt today. I realise they were on the gold standard vs fiat currency so easier said than done.  But the fallout from slavery will possibly destroy the entire country, so I'm willing to consider all possible options to prevent it.