Replies

Ultra Sonic: "But again, as has been reiterated over and over: any claim that the British forced the Founders to do anything following the conclusion of the Revolution doesn't pass the smell test."

ProgressingAmerica: "The Founders left society as they found it."

I think it's valid to argue that our Founders left in place the economics, laws and social structures they inherited from Britain.
Indeed, their original purpose was to simply to restore their "rights as Englishmen".
Among the institutions they inherited from British laws, and left in place, was slavery.

But this entire discussion, least we lose sight of it, is over the question: did our Founders feel the same about slavery as, for example, 1860 era Democrat Fire Eaters?

The answer is clearly "no", beginning with the fact that, almost to a man, our Founders considered slavery morally wrong and needing gradual, peaceful abolition.
They also acted to restrict or abolish slavery whenever and wherever they could.
This contrasts sharply with insane 1860 era Democrat Fire Eaters who believed slavery was a good thing and should be expanded whenever and wherever possible.
And that any new legal restrictions on slavery were justification enough to declare secession and even war against the United States.

Hey, just a fair warning, this user is big time trolling the forum to stir the pot and cause fighting amongst the users here.

I wanted to show you just how terribly and out of context this was done. You quoted in the first part:

Ultra Sonic: "But again, as has been reiterated over and over: any claim that the British forced the Founders to do anything following the conclusion of the Revolution doesn't pass the smell test."

ProgressingAmerica: "The Founders left society as they found it."

And here is that actual paragraph and the paragraph before it from where that ridiculous lift was made: (https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4172958/posts?page=135#135)

Yes, they did. It is abundantly clear to any fifth grader who would set about, much less grown adults like us that when reading Madison's notes at the Constitutional Convention, the framers only set out to do one thing. They framed a government. Nothing more, nothing less. That's it. It was just a discussion and framing of a government.
What did not happen at the Convention? They didn't remold society using the coercive police power of government. The Founders left society as they found it. They didn't throw people into gulags for wrong think, or force them onto naval vessels via impressment like the empire did.

You see just how bad this is? This user might claim that somehow I edited it - I can't edit post 135, none of us to my knowledge can edit. That's what it says in the original. Now you can do what you want, but I just wanted to throw it out there, please consider to stop feeding this troll. That sentence is clearly and unmistakably about what was going on in the Constitutional Convention and a comparison of what was not going on in the Convention, an event which is very well documented by Madison himself. And we also don't have Founder-built gulags anywhere on Google Maps either.

There's no doubt this user is trolling. Just trying to reduce some of the heat around here. It's been done on purpose. We are being goaded into wasting time, this is not a real/reasonable discussion in the aggregate with this user. Often times users like this keep poking people and then they will go call in a moderator and get you banned. That is common troll behavior.