Founding Fathers Were 'Guys Who Didn't Give Women the Vote and Let Slavery Stand' (ABC)

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/07/03/abcs-week-founding-fathers-werent-gods-they-were-just-guys-didnt-let- ^

[chessplayer]

ABC's "This Week" began its Independence Day weekend program with a segment that echoed Time magazine's cover story questioning whether the Constitution matters anymore.

After historian Douglas Brinkley said, "We shouldn't act like [the Founding Fathers] were somehow omnipotent," ABC's John Donvan responded, "They were not gods, they were guys - guys who didn't give women the vote and let slavery stand"

[Jack Hammer]

And they would have had no use for a nonsensical rag like Time - except in the back yard outhouse.

[DesertRhino]

The British government that supposedly was fighting slavery was doing nothing of the kind. They enslaved India in a terrifying manner.

It’s amazing to hear another euro lecture. Not when there is so much blood on their hands all around the world. Wanna discuss opium in China? Wanna discuss king leopold in Belgium? Wanna discuss their treatment of Jews? The entire middle east, the asian subcontinent, China, and africa all are the result of European bullcrap.
Every hell hole on earth today has it’s roots in Europes abuse.

But America is the impure,,, what a joke. Go sip some tea,, just don’t think much about it.

[DesertRhino]

The British government that supposedly was fighting slavery was doing nothing of the kind. They enslaved India in a terrifying manner.

It’s amazing to hear another euro lecture. Not when there is so much blood on their hands all around the world. Wanna discuss opium in China? Wanna discuss king leopold in Belgium? Wanna discuss their treatment of Jews? The entire middle east, the asian subcontinent, China, and africa all are the result of European bullcrap.
Every hell hole on earth today has it’s roots in Europes abuse.

But America is the impure,,, what a joke. Go sip some tea,, just don’t think much about it and the plantations it came from.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Good catch.

[Iron Munro]

Leftists fault conservatives when we fall short of our high ideals.

Leftists with sortcomings are excused from criticism because they have no aspirations to higher ideals.

[darkwing104]

His wife kept a few house slaves after they were married.

Jefferson also warned "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a context.... I think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating, that of the slave rising from the dust, his condition mollifying, the way I hope preparing, under the auspices of heaven, for a total emancipation, and that this is disposed, in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masters, rather than by their extirpation."

He understood what was going to happen if the United States didn't abolish slavery.

[chessplayer]

“And you make me so mad i can’t believe it. Another thing for you here. Before you think England was on some holy crusade to end slavery,,,, tell us why they supported the south all they could during the civil war?

They tried as hard as they could for the slave holding south to win.”

I don`t think they supported the south because the south supported slavery. I think it was more of a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing. The breakup of the US was in their best interests.

[DesertRhino]

You are nuts if you think George III couldnt have your life if he wanted it.
The Bloody law meant England had over 200 death offenses into the 1800s. They could even execute you for spending a month with a gypsey. Minor poaching (pretty neat when the king or his buds owns all the land),

Yes, Mopnarchs could kill you. And when they couldnt, they could lock you up in conditions that would kill you just as handily. Europe is good at supressing dissent and murder.

They only nominally behave now because of the USA and WWII. Enforced peace,,,,

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

First of all, I don't really care about what other European nations have or haven't done.

Nobody has claimed that any nation is 'pure' they all have their faults as well as virtues, although apparently, not everyone is capable of seeing that.

With regards to India, calling it 'slavery' is a misnomer. No Indian was enslaved in India by the British Empire. However, it does reminds me of a verbal exchange between Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on the subject of British rule in India: "The Indians have suffered for years under British oppression," she declared.

"Are we talking about the brown-skinned Indians in India who have multiplied under benevolent British rule," Churchill retorted. "Or are we speaking about the red-skinned Indians in America who, I understand, are now almost extinct?"

[GeronL]

Britain finally got around to ending slavery in its last colony in 1936. Northern Nigeria.

[CdMGuy]

Yeah, and Jesus only chose men for his apostles. Guess he doesn’t deserve much respect either. Consider the source, that being ABC News. Just one more reason never to watch or read the main stream media.

[GeronL]

Using the past to justify present trangressions is stupid.

[onedoug]

The pomposity overwhelms....

[DesertRhino]

“I don`t think they supported the south because the south supported slavery. I think it was more of a “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing. The breakup of the US was in their best interests.”

Yes, of course. But i pointed that out to AfricanChristian because he seems to think the British government was on some some sort of holy mission to end slavery. My point is that the British were more than happy with slaves as long as it worked FOR the Empire.

Witness also the way they ruled India and their areas of China at the same moment they were supposedly ending slavery.

England acted in the interests of england,,, nothing else. Never out of some moral crusade about the well being of brown and black people.

[Las Vegas Ron]

There is a fault I see in conservatives - the inability to accept that either their nation or their revered figures did any wrong.

You are an idiot and apparently STILL a slave.

I predict a short stay here at FR.

[ken5050]

You don’t even have to go abroad for stuff like that. Go back 70+ years..FDR..the great FDR, the progressive hero..he REFUSED to allow Jews to come to the US, escape the Nazis, before the war started..how many hundreds of thousands might have been saved...and then, in the single greatest suspension of our civl liberties and violation of the Constitution, he rounded up Japanese-American CITIZENS, and herded them into camps..

[rlmorel]

Ann Coulter makes the point in her book “Demonic” that the left wants to destroy the legacy of the American Revolution...one way they do that is by comparing it on an equal footing with the French Revolution. Another way is by slandering the founders.

[DesertRhino]

“With regards to India, calling it ‘slavery’ is a misnomer. No Indian was enslaved in India by the British Empire”

The Indians disagree. Read “The Raj”,,, For extra credit read “with Kitchner to Khartoum”.
The difference between a British Colonial leader and a “Plantation Massa” could only be seen by an attorney. To the poor wretch under them,,,there was no difference.

[rlmorel]

Yep. Right out of the playbook.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

You could be hung for pickpocketing a silk hankerchief in 18th Century Britain, such was the brutally simple approach to lowering the rate of receidivsm in convicted criminals in those days. But this had nothing to do with the monarch, and everything to do with Parliamentary legislation. Surprising as it may be, George III wasn't ruling by decree. It took several acts of Parliament into the 1830s to reduce the number the number of crimes eligable for the death penalty to essentially, murder and treason. But even before this, the death penalty was not imposed arbitrarily. Defendents had the right to trial by jury, and plenty of juries acquitted defendents who the government would rather have seen convicted, like John Wilkes, for example.

However, regarding the death penalty, George III did use his influence to prevent a madwoman who had tried to assassinate him from suffering the death penalty, and she was confined to an asylum instead. Rather enlightened for the time considering that, as you have also pointed out, far less serious crimes were eligable to a sentence of death by hanging...