Posted on 07/13/2004 8:03:30 AM PDT by Mike Bates
A recent column, for those of you so thoughtless as to have missed it, was about what it might have been like if some of today’s liberals were involved with drafting the Declaration of Independence.
I wrote that many of the Founding Fathers were geniuses who shared their talents in forming this, the greatest of all countries. I revere them.
This is not a universally held view. A local man reminded me of that with correspondence he sent:
"Just like the bullies that Republicans are. Take advantage of someone weaker than you and make it seem like you did something special. Well I am sooooo glad that my God says that the meek shall inhabit the earth and that the first shall be last . . ..
"The writers of the declaration of independence wanted to be on high but God will lay them low for the crimes against mankind and the Indians. The writers of that document were racist, sexist, elitist and mostly criminals. Sounds like the current day government. Hmmm.
"Not one single person died as a result of Clinton’s follies! How many kids have died as a result of Bush’s lies?"
Nice transition there from bashing the Founders to defending Clinton’s "follies." It’s not always follies, of course.
Sometimes it’s peccadilloes or foibles. Or indiscretions or frailties. Anything that focuses on sex rather than his more serious transgressions in office.
But I digress. The reader charges most of the Founders were criminals. No doubt they were in the eyes of the English king, but I’m unaware of anything beyond that.
The accusation that the Founders were racist is much more widespread. It’s practically an article of faith in many college history courses.
The Most Reverend Jesse Jackson spoke to it in a 2002 speech at Michigan State University: "Democracy as we know it did not begin in Philadelphia, where a bunch of white men wrote the laws. These men’s wives were not allowed (to vote), these laws were made at a time when only white men had the right to vote."
Here it’s obligatory to note that what the Founders intended to establish was a republic, positively not a democracy. They knew the difference, even if Mr. Jackson doesn’t.
Perhaps I should cut him some slack. We all know how deeply immersed he is in spiritual matters. Perhaps he hasn’t had the time to learn the distinction.
Were the Founders racist? Some of them owned slaves. Some of them at times defended slavery. That’s part of our history, one we can’t change.
At the same time, it’s worth noting how some of the Founders viewed slavery. Years before the Declaration, Benjamin Franklin denounced the "constant butchery of the human species by this pestilent detestable traffic in the bodies and souls of men."
John Adams called termed slavery a "foul contagion in the human character." Another signer of the Declaration, Benjamin Rush, helped start the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
George Washington wrote about slavery: "There is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it." Thomas Jefferson declared: "Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free."
Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration included a blistering indictment of England’s king for promoting the slave trade in the colonies. That portion was removed when Southern delegates objected.
We should keep in mind the world in which our Founding Fathers were born. Despotism, tyranny, the abuse of power and slavery were the rule. The concept that individuals held God-given rights had not been widely accepted in much of the world.
The Founders compromised. They deleted Jefferson’s language on slavery to win approval of the Declaration of Independence. Yet in winning agreement, they set the framework for the core philosophy of the Declaration to be more fully realized.
Alan Keyes has written: "Jefferson, and with him the leading lights of the Founding generation, had the decency to acknowledge what few in the course of human history before that era had ever acknowledged — that slavery was wrong. Speaking this truth was the first step toward changing the life of America — just as acknowledging the principles of justice is always the first step toward doing justice."
The Declaration if Independence wasn’t perfect. No creation of mere mortals will ever be. Still, the Declaration and the Constitution launched a system of government that ultimately ended slavery.
In the long run, the aspiration of human equality articulated in the Declaration was to a great extent achieved. Not bad for a bunch of purportedly racist, sexist, elitist and mostly criminal white men.
While I do admire the Founders of this Nation, I don't worship them as some do.
At the end of the day, they were Men. With all that entails, good and bad. They changed the world in a way we still don't appreciate, to be sure.
But they were Men, with feet of clay, just like any one of us.
Jefferson wanted a lot of stuff in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence that didn't make it into the final versions. Too bad they didn't, but practicality and politics said they couldn't.
I am so sick of this one. What "lies" are these people referring to?
They may have had FEET of clay, but the current generation of liberals have the clay all the way to the tops of their heads, including their well-styled coiffures.
I suspect he ignores what his God says about homos, those who murder the innocents, and anything remotely sounding like that classic rightwing religious bludgeon, 'sin'.
I actually met someone (a self professed Liberal)who, after 9-11, said he didn't care if a plane crashed into the Whitehouse "because George Washington had slaves". Unbelivable!
Liberals should be required to wear headphones plugged directly into the reverberations of history.
when psychos babble.......
Don't even bother. Some people are just idiots.
That's kind of not true. The Constitution specifically set aside any discussion of slavery for a period of 20 years, the Framers knowing that slavery was the one issue that would kill the Republic before it had any chance to live. If any specific anti-slave-trade or anti-slavery had found its way into the Constitution, it would not have been ratified in the South. And when Philadelphia Quakers, led by Franklin in the last years of his life, tried to get the new Congress to debate the issue of slavery specifically, a deal was brokered to more or less "table" the issue for another day.
It took a real, live shooting war to decide the slavery issue. The Constitution, as written by the Framers, was purposefully silent on the issue.
Oh, give me a break. At the time of the Constitution, slavery was perceived as a dying institution, economically unsustainable, which is why they agreed to ignore it and leave it for the states to figure out. Hell, they couldn't bring themselves to use the word "slave" in the Constitution. It's all "Persons in Service." But the economics of slavery were completely transformed by the invention of the cotton gin. Suddenly it became hugely profitable to own slaves, and once that happened, there was little chance the south was ever going to go for emancipation. Not as long as the slaveowning aristocracy ran things. The northern states had all abolished slavery in a 23 year period, from 1777 to 1800. How many states ended slavery in the 65 years after that? Zero. Instead, the south agitated for expanding slavery, into Texas, into California, into Utah, into Kansas, into Missouri, into New Mexico. They wanted to annex Cuba just to add more slave territory.
In the 1850s, slaves were the largest capital investment in the U.S., with a value of $1 billion at a time when the federal budget was $25 million, and they were only getting more valuable, individually appreciating at about 10% a year.
The problem with "debunking" the Founders is that it leads one to fail to apprehend the very high standard of political genius that went into designing and implementing a form of government unique in the world at the time and still very unlike any other. One need not swing from extreme to extreme in regard to these gentlemen - they certainly weren't saints but that does not mean that they were "criminals." Most of the signators of the Declaration of Independence paid dearly in their personal lives for the temerity of defying the King, with us as the beneficiaries. If some pinheaded liberal crybaby wants to miscategorize them it's only because he miscategorizes everything else.
The person you met is also ignorant of history as George Washington never lived in the White House.
But he got his wish because Washington was inaugurated in NYC not far from where the twin towers used to stand.
Whoa...you obviously know your US slave history. But, for the sake of clarity, in NY State it was still legal to own slaves until 1821, based on the laws passed in the late 1700s.
All in all, there was plenty of bad behavior to go around, but the original point, that slavery was far from a dying institution and was, in fact, becoming increasingly profitable, still stands.
I come to this by way of NYC history. An interesting side note in case you did not know: the slave auctions in NYC were held where Wall St. meets the East River.
And then it's often the Lefties who claim that conservatives have polluted political discourse with their extremism.
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