Does Ownership of Slaves Define a Historical Figure?

[martybegan]

Nah, I'm a rack man, that precludes dudes, and the ones that get the surgery to pretend to be otherwise don't count.

Okay, buddy... if you say so. (snicker)

Whatever, you tea-bagged old fart.

 

[Polishprince]

We are all born into circumstances over which we have no control. There are genetics, financial resources, family assets, a prevailing culture and legal system, a religious theme in the household (or not). It is often called "The Birth Lottery." Some win, some lose, but most get a mixed bag.

Many of the Founding Fathers were born into a culture where chattel slaves were an economic and personal fact. Neither they nor their parents nor their relatives and friends considered ownership and exploitation of slaves to be "evil." Indeed, I have no doubt that from birth they were all uniformly taught that the slaves were inferior human beings (maybe less than human) whose lives would be much, much worse had they not been removed from their ancestral homes in Africa, and to take proper care of one's slaves was a virtuous thing. Their ministers and preachers reinforced this message continually, and they collectively had no doubt of the truth of it.

To reject slavery for moral reasons would have bankrupted each and every one of them who freed his slaves, and would have made the Emancipator a pariah among his peers. None of the plantations generated sufficient revenue to compensate paid farmhands, even if a sufficient supply of them could be found - which they manifestly could not.

To sit here comfortably, three hundred years later and condemn these men for not having freed their slaves is irrational, unfair, and preposterous. Slave owning did not define them, just as an adulterous relationship does not define a contemporary married person. We are the sum of all of our actions and influences. Take off a few points if you like for the slave owners, but to deny their greatness is arrogant and vacuous.

Nobody is without faults, either today or in the past. Which is worse, owning and keeping slaves, or fathering children and abandoning them? What about seeing this going on all around and doing nothing to stop it?

Your virtue is bullshit.

What really fries my ass is the fact that this is still "July", named for noted Slaveholder Julius Caesar. What's wrong with changing it to "Thermidor" like the French did?

 

[JoeB131]

Whatever, you tea-bagged old fart.

Naw, man, Teabagging is what you guys did. IN fact, you proudly called yourselves "Teabaggers".

 

[Polishprince]

Whatever, you tea-bagged old fart.

Naw, man, Teabagging is what you guys did. IN fact, you proudly called yourselves "Teabaggers".

No one knew that "tea bagging" was a term for certain gay sex acts until this was pointed out at the advent of the Tea Party movement.

Even experienced homosexuals didn't know what it was, guys who devoted their whole lives to taking it in the caboose.

 

[MarcATL]

OP, is it OK to define those who treated slaves horribly as evil then?

 

[martybegan]

Whatever, you tea-bagged old fart.

Naw, man, Teabagging is what you guys did. IN fact, you proudly called yourselves "Teabaggers".

Um, no that was a childish name made up by childish leftists.

 

[Fueri]

Standards of morality change constantly.

Wagging a finger at a slave owner from the 1700's is ridiculous.

Our entire society denied women the right to vote until 1920. Was every man that lived prior to 1920 some sort of oppressor or an immoral person then. We can point to numerous examples of this throughout our history and could then pin the scarlet letter upon anyone that didn't live up to the new standards before they were actually standards. How that isn't obviously senseless I have no idea.

From another perspective, you can't charge someone with a crime that wasn't illegal at the time they committed the act, and with good reason. People acting within the bounds of the law at the time of their actions shouldn't be penalized, judged or anything else.

We've really slipped our moorings over the past few months. Zero doubt about it.

 

[JoeB131]

No one knew that "tea bagging" was a term for certain gay sex acts until this was pointed out at the advent of the Tea Party movement.

Even experienced homosexuals didn't know what it was, guys who devoted their whole lives to taking it in the caboose.

I first heard the term in 2007, and the person involved was a woman describing what she did with her boyfriend.

 

[JoeB131]

Standards of morality change constantly.

Wagging a finger at a slave owner from the 1700's is ridiculous.

Our entire society denied women the right to vote until 1920. Was every man that lived prior to 1920 some sort of oppressor or an immoral person then. We can point to numerous examples of this throughout our history and could then pin the scarlet letter upon anyone that didn't live up to the new standards before they were actually standards. How that isn't obviously senseless I have no idea.

From another perspective, you can't charge someone with a crime that wasn't illegal at the time they committed the act, and with good reason. People acting within the bounds of the law at the time of their actions shouldn't be penalized, judged or anything else.

We've really slipped our moorings over the past few months. Zero doubt about it.

The thing was, even when the Founding Slave Rapists were alive, people realized that slavery was wrong. It had already been outlawed in most of Europe at that point.

So, yes, we can wag our fingers at them all day.

 

[JoeB131]

Um, no that was a childish name made up by childish leftists.

Naw, guy, you were the ones wearing teabags on your pretend hats... until someone pointed it out.

 

[martybegan]

Um, no that was a childish name made up by childish leftists.

Naw, guy, you were the ones wearing teabags on your pretend hats... until someone pointed it out.

View attachment 361422

That's not the name, which was applied by childish leftists.

But now you are just being obtuse, it doesn't suit you. Being a shriveled up old twat does.

 

[IM2]

This was a circumstance that was controllable by simply not buying slaves. When will some whites stop making excuses and pretending that all of this is only about slavery?

"They [Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes] brought the important news that by nature all men are free and equal and that they have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property. But the American colonists, having accepted these ideas while at the same time enslaving the Africans and dispossessing the Native Americans, found themselves in a dilemma wherein they wished to continue these ideas, to identify with key ideals, but at the same time to continue to profit from the anti-ideal, which the Lockean belief in self-interest led them to believe in equally. The result was the American ‘trick’: the surrender of morality and higher aspirations to self-interest… By ignoring the equal humanity of its minorities[sic], America began the long process of denying the reality of its history."

Y.N. Kly, The Anti-Social Contract

 

[IM2]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

 

[Polishprince]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

Why not one to Kirk Douglas, who led the most famous slave revolt in history?

 

[Fueri]

Standards of morality change constantly.

Wagging a finger at a slave owner from the 1700's is ridiculous.

Our entire society denied women the right to vote until 1920. Was every man that lived prior to 1920 some sort of oppressor or an immoral person then. We can point to numerous examples of this throughout our history and could then pin the scarlet letter upon anyone that didn't live up to the new standards before they were actually standards. How that isn't obviously senseless I have no idea.

From another perspective, you can't charge someone with a crime that wasn't illegal at the time they committed the act, and with good reason. People acting within the bounds of the law at the time of their actions shouldn't be penalized, judged or anything else.

We've really slipped our moorings over the past few months. Zero doubt about it.

The thing was, even when the Founding Slave Rapists were alive, people realized that slavery was wrong. It had already been outlawed in most of Europe at that point.

So, yes, we can wag our fingers at them all day.

Not sure where you got that impression but no, it wasn't. You can argue that it had been identified as something that was wrong by that time, but in terms of law, and certainly in practice, in Europe slavery was very much alive in 1776.



"Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade.[305] This happened with a decree issued by King Christian VII of Denmark in 1792, to become fully effective by 1803."

History of slavery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the UK slavery was ongoing until emancipation in the 1830's.

 

[IM2]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

Why not one to Kirk Douglas, who led the most famous slave revolt in history?

I don't think Kirk Douglass led a slave revolt.

 

[Polishprince]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

Why not one to Kirk Douglas, who led the most famous slave revolt in history?

I don't think Kirk Douglass led a slave revolt.

You need to learn history.

 

[Polishprince]

Standards of morality change constantly.

Wagging a finger at a slave owner from the 1700's is ridiculous.

Our entire society denied women the right to vote until 1920. Was every man that lived prior to 1920 some sort of oppressor or an immoral person then. We can point to numerous examples of this throughout our history and could then pin the scarlet letter upon anyone that didn't live up to the new standards before they were actually standards. How that isn't obviously senseless I have no idea.

From another perspective, you can't charge someone with a crime that wasn't illegal at the time they committed the act, and with good reason. People acting within the bounds of the law at the time of their actions shouldn't be penalized, judged or anything else.

We've really slipped our moorings over the past few months. Zero doubt about it.

The thing was, even when the Founding Slave Rapists were alive, people realized that slavery was wrong. It had already been outlawed in most of Europe at that point.

So, yes, we can wag our fingers at them all day.

Not sure where you got that impression but no, it wasn't. You can argue that it had been identified as something that was wrong by that time, but in terms of law, and certainly in practice, in Europe slavery was very much alive in 1776.



"Denmark-Norway was the first European country to ban the slave trade.[305] This happened with a decree issued by King Christian VII of Denmark in 1792, to become fully effective by 1803."

History of slavery - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In the UK slavery was ongoing until emancipation in the 1830's.

Casimir the Great freed the slaves in 1347 in Poland.

 

[martybegan]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

There's a monument already, even if it's just a road sign monument.

 

[IM2]

Maybe we build a Nat Turner monument.

There's a monument already, even if it's just a road sign monument.

Nope. He needs a statue.