No, progressivism is not in the lineage of the abolitionists

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[ProgressingAmerica]

Crisis is probably an understatement, though there were plenty of Social Gospelers out there back then who rejected the individual interpretation and promoted hard core collectivism in the church. Walter Rauschenbusch was one such person.

To that extent I would say that to whatever effect progressivism came out of the churches, I would supplant the word crisis and replace it with the word perversion. Anything based on a perversion is no good and progressivism is example #1.

Coming out of the universities and professional classes, those guys had lost touch with the Founding many years prior and had no connection at all to the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God". So even at best if we say that for some of these progressives that the break from America wasn't an intentional and aggressive act, they still drifted away and were no longer connected.

But for progressivism's leaders and intellectuals, no, they knew America. And they hated it and aggressively wanted no part of it. They wanted the biggest government that could be imagined and we see that today. No matter how big government gets, big isn't big enough. Government needs to be bigger.

"That's something you see in the new progressivism as well as in the old -- the idea that bad people are holding the world back and have to be gotten around or gotten rid of."

All ideologies are this way. The Soviets needed to kill off the Kulaks and whoever else they killed. Hitler had to kill the Jews and whoever else they killed, for the Progressives it was the trusts and the Founding. There is no reason, it is the opposite of reasoning. There is only "the enemy", and there is no limit to the depravity that "the enemy" cannot face. This has very little to do with some "puritanical" strain, it's simply ideology 101.

[DiogenesLamp]

But what they had in common is the most important thing - our Rights are a Gift from God, and the abolitionists and Founders agreed on this.

And according to the founders, the right to independence is the most important right. They explained this in a little document called "THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE."

As for Charles Dickens, that passage is an irrelevant bait and switch. It doesn't matter what anybody else thought about the abolitionists any more than what the King thought about the Founders or what the tories thought of the Founders.

It is contemporaneous proof that they were regarded as kooks and loons by the vast majority of the population back during that era.

Our Rights are a Gift from God. Let's see you say it. "Our Rights are a Gift from God." You say it.

"WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them...

In the founders words.

[ProgressingAmerica]

"It is contemporaneous proof that they were regarded as kooks and loons"

Sounds good to me, I would want King George looking at me like a kook too. I'm standing with good people. On October 19, 1781 the kooks won. So, there's that.

"And according to the founders, the right to independence is the most important right."

Importance? Where? I searched the text of the Declaration for the word importance, it was below what you quoted, here: "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."

The irony is, that this passage has been interpreted to include abolitionist laws that the Founders were passing prior to independence. These were the laws that the King was vetoing. Oh the irony.

I am not aware that the Founders numerically ranked any right over any other, but if they did you did not provide anything to show it. I suppose you could say the Bill of Rights, but I don't think you would bring that up, because Independence didn't even make the top 10 nor even the top 12.

But I did notice you didn't say that our Rights are the Gift from God. At the end of the day, nothing else said really matters.

[Bratch]

I wanted a record in case the article was ever taken down or moved from the Heritage site.

[ProgressingAmerica]

That’s a good idea.

Even if that page were to disappear though, my audiobooks won’t. They’re all free in the public domain which makes them widely dispersed. The progressives have attempted to hide this for 100 years, it isn’t going away now.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp quoting Charles Dickens letter to WW Cerjet 16 March 1862: "Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale.
For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties.
They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."

So, like DiogenesLamp himself, it appears that Charles Dickens in March, 1862, had a very limited understanding of Americans, Northern or Southern.
Most specifically, Dickens & DiogenesLamp cannot see the difference between Northern anti-slavery Republicans and pro-slavery Democrats.
That's why when Dickens here says, "the North" he really means Northern pro-slavery Democrats.
When he talks about "the hated abolitionists" he means the anti-slavery Republican minority.

Remember, when Dickens had visited the US in 1842, there were no Republicans and Northerners opposed to slavery nationally remained a decided minority.
For example, in 1840 the opposition Whig party won the Presidency and won majorities North & South by posing no threat to slavery.
As recently as 1856 a majority of Northerners -- south of Chicago, Detroit & New York City -- most were pro-slavery Democrats.
That is the America Dickens knew and commented on in 1862.

But by 1860 everything had changed -- anti-slavery Republicans were now the majority in every state north of the Mason-Dixon line.
Pro-slavery Democrats were reduced to their strongholds in big-cities (especially New York) and the southern-most counties of states like Illinois.
Of all this Charles Dickens knew nothing.

As for "the North" alleged to "hate the Negro," in fact freed-black populations were growing in every Northern region and growing fastest in just those states (i.e., Illinois) with the strongest "Black Codes" intended to restrict them.
So the truth is that while Northern pro-slavery Democrats may well have "hated the Negro", anti-slavery Republicans had a different idea -- one founded in the Bible and in such books as Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852, "Uncle Tom's Cabin".

Of which neither Charles Dickens nor our own DiogenesLamp had/have any understanding.

Finally, we should also notice Dickens' prediction of a "compromise" which would ignore slavery -- that did not happen, but rather Unconditional Surrender, Reconstruction and the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments did happen.

So both Dickens and DiogenesLamp could not be more wrong.

[BroJoeK]

x: "Abolitionism grew out of (Protestant) Christianity."

Diogeneslamp: "Specifically Massachusetts puritans, the ancestors of which were driven out of every nation because they were trouble making loons."

In fact, Puritans practiced & codified slavery in the 17th century, tolerated it well into the 18th century.
The original opposition to slavery, on moral grounds, came from Philadelphia Quakers, in 1688.

Nearly 100 years later, Pennsylvanians responded with the country's first "Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery "

So... turns out that DiogenesLamp's "trouble making loons" were pretty much those same trouble making loons who gathered in Philadelphia to write a Declaration of Independence and Constitutions for the United States.

Yes, perhaps they were a distinct minority, but important nontheless.

[BroJoeK]

Sorry, I intended to include you too...
See my post #27, in response to DiogenesLamp's post #16.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It is contemporaneous proof that they were regarded as kooks and loons by the vast majority of the population back during that era."

Charles Dickens visited the United States in 1842 and that is the "era" Dickens was familiar with.
In 1842 there were no US Republicans or "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
Democrats in 1842 were the party of slavery and opposition Whigs included many Southern slaveholders.
Northerners opposed slavery in their own states and in western territories as spelled out by the 1820 Missouri Compromise.

But by 1860 everything had changed, unbeknownst to Dickens, and the majority of Northerners were now anti-slavery "kooks and loons".
They opposed slavery not just in their own states, but also in western territories (like Kansas) and some even worked to have slavery abolished in slave-states.

[x]

Dickens was a great creator of caricatures. He took one feature of personality and exaggerated it to produce an original and entertaining comic figure. He wasn't somebody who could find and communicate nuances or describe whole groups of people.

Generalizations like his are easy to make if you aren't familiar with all the details involved. Massive books have been written about racial attitudes in American history. They certainly weren't what's held up as acceptable today, but I wouldn't give a foreigner passing through the country on a book tour as the last word on those attitudes.

Sure, the New England Yankees could be unruly troublemakers. That's how we got the American Revolution, as well as the abolitionist movement. But for a century after the Civil War, hard as it is to believe now, New England was a relatively conservative part of the country. The changes that happened in New England over the last 60 years or so aren't very different from what's been happening in and around big cities all across the country in recent decades.

Plus, any country has to strike a balance between innovation and stability if it wants to survive. We owe much of our prosperity to New England tinkerers and inventors. Things have evened out in recent years, but more of the innovations and inventions that made our economy what it is today came out of the North than out of the South.

[DiogenesLamp]

Sounds good to me, I would want King George looking at me like a kook too.

The difference is, they were considered kooks by their own fellow citizens within their own populations.

The irony is, that this passage has been interpreted to include abolitionist laws that the Founders were passing prior to independence.

You can drive a train through "has been interpreted." The Supreme court has lately "interpreted" the 14th amendment as a right for F@gs to get married.

Oddly enough, one of the grievances listed in the Declaration was the deliberate stirring up of slave rebellions. (He has incited domestic insurrections against us..)

The Declaration as originally written by Jefferson was a lot more anti-slavery, but the rest of the committee stripped out all that language and only left "all men are created equal" which nobody at the time intended to apply to slaves.

I am not aware that the Founders numerically ranked any right over any other, but if they did you did not provide anything to show it. I suppose you could say the Bill of Rights, but I don't think you would bring that up, because Independence didn't even make the top 10 nor even the top 12.

Not sure why this is difficult for you. Independence is the mother of all the others, and without the mother, you won't have any "children" rights.

But I did notice you didn't say that our Rights are the Gift from God.

The Founders said it for me, just as I showed you.

[ProgressingAmerica]

“Independence is the mother of all the others”

It’s not. God is. God-given rights. Not Independence-given rights.

That’s why it’s difficult for me. You and I can never agree. It makes perfect sense why you keep refusing to say it and have hidden behind quoting the Founders who “said it for me.” This also explains your inability to understand the abolitionists, and it also explains your non-interest in focusing in on progressives.

God is the source of our rights and progressivism is the problem. I have nothing else for you.

[DiogenesLamp]

That’s why it’s difficult for me. You and I can never agree. It makes perfect sense why you keep refusing to say it and have hidden behind quoting the Founders who “said it for me.”

You mistake me. I have no trouble saying it, I just have trouble with people trying to make me say something. :)

I just ran across this the other day and it sums up my family and I splendidly.

Traditional Borderer prayer:

"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for thou knowest I am hard to turn.

Without the Declaration, the colonies had no legal rights other than those allowed by the King.

[ProgressingAmerica]

“force?” When is the last time you had a real discussion with someone without using loaded language to try to gain tactical advantage? Just, a normal discussion and that’s all.

[DiogenesLamp]

I've had a lot of discussions in my life, and this one is about as normal as they come. You meet all kinds out there and some are more reasonable than others, but the others want to argue just as much as if they were reasonable.