> The problem was that they did not see other races as people as they saw themselves. They saw their lives and societies and thought of them as savages.
Yes
> religion (which was more unquestionable
No - America was founded as a country on freedom of religion, which is why it ended up with thousands of little groups from a state of polyamorists to some guys who really liked making furniture.
> than say, global warming is today)
Trolling
> extreme version of the modern liberal
Trolling. Also please choose whether Jefferson was an extreme liberal or a conservative prisoner of the prejudices of his time.
> they deserve some credit for their heroic bravery and ideas on liberty
Yes. There was also the question, even at the time, of how well they were going to live up to what they meant on liberty. They wrote "all men are created equal" into the declaration of independence then immediately spent the next 200 years arguing that meant "not all men". Some of the co-signatories were there at the time arguing against slavery, it's just that Jefferson was on the other side of this particular issue.
Yes, Jefferson wrote into the original draft of the constitution outlawed slavery, but the southern states refused to sign on to that. Historical facts and context like that do not invalidate all the good done by the Founding Fathers. That is my point.
I'm not aware you are rebelling against our government for the atrocities which exist in the world today.
The rest of your post is dismissive of not asinine, and even against HN guidelines.
Slaves were not slaves because whites were trying to save them from themselves. They were slaves because they provided cheap labor. Any other argument is just a rationalization, a story for slave owners to tell themselves to make themselves feel better.
Both Washington and Jefferson owned plantations that profited from slave labor. Your comparison with the modern liberal should try to take that fact into account.
I'm obviously not rationalizing slavery. That's absurd. My point is to try to show context of what world those people lived in, I clearly said that.
The parent comment suggests some glaring flaw in their conception of liberty. Was it a glaring flaw? Yes. But it's important to understand that in the context of their belief system.
Do you eat animal products? Have you any idea what kind of abuses take place? Do you consume products produced by people whose lives are defined by insecure access to healthcare, safety or even nutrition? Do you contribute to the horrendous destruction of our environment? Work in sv? How many homeless people do you step over on your way to work?
It would be better if people got off their moral high horses and stopped taking for granted the liberty and prosperiry they have available to them here in America.
And politicians and bureaucrats certainly profit from those very schemes.
> The slave owner like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson was in some ways like an extreme version of the modern liberal -- seeing the person of color as needing an authority to rule over them and provide them with things like welfare, access to education, etc.
You’re being downvoted because you chose to regurgitate alt-right theology to lay history’s problems at the doorstep of “liberal guilt”
The largest group of benificaries of public education? Whites.
The largest group of beneficiaries of welfare? Whites.
Dont worry, you can almost always use versions of reductio ad hitlerum to invalidate any historical context or facts you come across which you dont like.
Your ad hominen attack seems especially ridiculous to me as I've never even visited an alt right website or community in my life with the exception of voat--when reddit started mass waves of censorship and politicking--which I havent even since returned to in years.
