How do burgers reconcile with the fact that the Founding Fathers were essentially oligarchs with hundreds of slaves?

Slavery was legal in the British Empire and the northern states ended it pretty quickly.

The US has always been full of shit up to its ears.
They oriented themselves as some kind of weird anti-colonial power in the 20th C which is hilarious in light of le manifest destiny and the amount of heel dragging they did over slavery.

Not all of them had slaves and many were actually anti-slavery. The Founding Fathers weren't one big monolith that all agreed on the same things.

>The Articles of Confederation are the same as the US Constitution
>This wasn't intended to be an evolving process
> Property rights were totally lame and letting the mob vote was a good idea
>The Bill of Rights are totally negotiable.
It's almost like you guys haven't read the required documents for this conversation and are virtue signalling.

What a retarded thread.

slavery was normal in the Americas. The Founding Fathers are Radical Liberals by the standard of their day.

Judging anyone's actions that happened more than a decade ago by contemporary standards is stupid.

>>dude owning slaves is like, totally fine

If you think that this was the attitude of the founding fathers, you need to read a book.

First, they were not all slave owners, many were strongly anti-slavery.

Even those who owned slaves tended to recognize the ethical issues this raised.

They weren't saints, they weren't perfect, they were human -- like everybody else, with human weaknesses.

They were also, taken as a whole, one of the more gifted concentrations of political thinkers history happened to have put in the same place at the same time. Warts and all.

Compared to what other government?

>It's almost like you guys haven't read the required documents for this conversation and are virtue signalling.

More likely that guy is just baiting a bit, for the sake of a discussion if you are feeling charitable.

This. Jefferson was against slavery and pushed for legislation to end it, I don't know what else to tell people who want to shit on him for inheriting a bunch of slaves, what exactly do you want? That he be erased from history and his contributions ignored?

Someone who holds slaves can hardly be considered for his humanity.
My point is: why do you guys still openly celebrate people like Thomas Jefferson? He was confronted costantly with excellent arguments on why him being a slavemaster was an obscenity, yet he never changed his mind, not even on his deathbed.

>muh excuses for slavery even though everyone was aware of how wrong it was

It was a genuine question. I guess you're not able to answer it.

Remembering someone and celebrating him are completely different things. For a starter I'd love the general population to completely discard anything he had to say about morality, theology and ethics.

>muh excuses for slavery even though everyone was aware of how wrong it was
>virtue signaling

Folk tales arent meant to be taken literally

>virtue signaling

Nice buzzword.

> For a starter I'd love the general population to completely discard anything he had to say about morality, theology and ethics.

Discarding an argument because of the man who proposed it is called an argumentam Ad Hominem, and is considered a logical fallacy.

nice argument

A man holding slaves clearly do not have the moral and ethical capacities to conjure even the most basic argument. As far as I'm concerned, it's like talking about thought processes with a schizo.

Thankfully, most people aren't so up their own ass as to engage in purity spirals and can recognize the great achievements of people like the Founding Fathers in spite of their flaws.

>its a "lets apply contemporary morals to the past" episode

>spiritual purity
>personal flaws
>while talking about holding slaves
You're right, it was no big deal.

>Remembering someone and celebrating him are completely different things. For a starter I'd love the general population to completely discard anything he had to say about morality, theology and ethics.
>tfw Jefferson tried to pass a law effectively abolishing slavery in Western territories but failed by one vote
>tfw he officially called for anti-slavery legislation multiple times, including during his presidency
>tfw he tried multiple times to push for emancipation but always ended up failing
>tfw he'll probably keep getting shat on more and more because he had to do the dance with the devil many times to keep the Union intact

He should be celebrated, he did what he could with what he had, I personally admire the man.

You can apply the morals of the past too, Jefferson was heavily criticized for his slaveholding and the brutality that he used to discipline his slaves.
>own slaves, treat them like shit, break families by selling individual slaves as a punishment, rape some of them, when he dies he auctions them instead of freeing them, but forget that please!

>My point is: why do you guys still openly celebrate people like Thomas Jefferson? He was confronted costantly with excellent arguments on why him being a slavemaster was an obscenity, yet he never changed his mind, not even on his deathbed.

Where did you see me celebrating Thomas Jefferson for his morality or humanity? He was a dick. His treatment of his friend, John Adams, on the political front demonstrates his basic dickishness as well as anything.

And, as you mention, as a slave owner who felt slavery was morally wrong, he was not above hypocrisy.

But he was also a gifted political thinker -- the two are not mutually exclusive.

I don't require people who I admire for one thing to be admirable in all things. Overall, I do not admire Mr. Jefferson. But I admire some of his qualities.

Plus he has a giant sloth named after him. So that's cool.

>For a starter I'd love the general population to completely discard anything he had to say about morality, theology and ethics.

Then you are either stupid or trolling. Or possibly both, I guess.

You are simply repeating the same logical fallacy. Why should a man be of virtue himself, to be able to discuss virtue? You have given no reason for this, other than using the word 'clearly' for something which is by no means clear or obvious.

No one is forgetting anything, then again I have a hard time caring too because I don't care for niggers much either, they chain themselves up nowadays anyways

>it's like talking about thought processes with a schizo.

But what if the schizo is right about something? The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with who makes it.

You might follow up on the hint that gave you, and read up on "Ad Hominem Fallacy," and why such an attack is fallacious.

OP, may I ask you a serious question?

Why have you singled out slave ownership is the only filter to establish morality?

I am not arguing that slavery was not immoral, I am curious as to why, out of all the various moral failings men are heir to, only this one seems to bother you.

>Judging anyone's actions that happened more than a decade ago by contemporary standards is stupid.
This goes both ways. If you're allowed to bring up their virtues why can't others call them out on their bullshit?

Valid point.

Though some virtues (and vices) seem to endure longer than others.

I'm the kind of person who comes dangerously close to idolizing the Founding Fathers, Washington in particular, but I still want people to call them out on their bullshit. They themselves would have wanted this.

But in the process of calling them out, I don't want people to dismiss their ideas.

One moral failing doesn't necessarily invalidate other aspects of your moral reasoning. You can't say, for instance, some of these people were slave holders so clearly the mandate to govern shouldn't be derived from the governed like these people suggested.

t. Person who would take moral advices from child rapists only because they've never learnt how fallacies ought to be used

I've mentioned them because, you know, they're the Founding Fathers.
>Why have you singled out slave ownership is the only filter to establish morality?
I have not singled it out, I've just said that it's one of those actions that should disqualify you from any debate about morality. There are countless other similar actions, but that does not make the act of owning slaves less obscene.
I mean, it's not like I'm complaining about a random specific 18th century slave owner: we're talking about the guys on your currency!

One moral failing? Owning slaves for all of your adult life, and then auction them when you die is one moral failing? You could say that it's just one, but you should also mention that it permeated every moment of his life, for he could have freed them at any moment.

To judge some historical figure using modern standards is about the most idiotic thing you can do. Almost as bad as making them to be one dimensional tv-like characters.

What if the child rapist is right?

You are committing a fallacy, end of story. Stupid plebeian

>What if the child rapist is right?
His insight would be of no value, for we could not trust his moral judgement. Regardless, if you need a child rapist to get moral advices, you had no place in this debate from the beginning.
A classic case of how reddit logic alienates weak intellects from basic reality.

>You are committing a fallacy, end of story. Stupid plebeian
It feels like 2011 again.

You're a retard, people like Jefferson were seen as monsters even in their lifetimes.

Guys, we could explain it to him again, but we can't understand it for him. See you in the next thread.

>jefferson was seen as a monster
By who?
The way peopel remeber him is no where near monster level

>tfw user feels superior because he adhere to the reddit's notion of logic
If the argument itself is doubting the moral capacities of specific individuals, that's not an ad hominem, you fucking retards: that the subject that is being debated.
It's like having someone ask "do natural instincts bear any value?" and then another smug retard like you comes in and start spouting "APPEAL TO NATURE APPEAL TO NATURE". That's not the point, you fucking idiot.

You cant use today`s moral filter to call them evil. Back then it was okay to have slaves. Today not. It pretty simple concept

Not true, by the way.

The problem isnt questioning their morals but that you want to outright dismiss whatever they have said due to one thing they did, that was acceptable socially, during their time. That is the problem. As has been saidJefferson had tried, multiple times to free the slaves. The US Gov't wasnt as monolithic and powerful as it is today nor, as shown in 1861, as unified as people seem to think. Had he EO them, if even possible, what of the rest of the Union? What would you do when the country fractures in say 1801 or 1790 over such an issue. Weakening it enough other Imperial power prey on it causing other such suffering? That is a moral debate for you and possibly one they held at the time. Stop being a troll, retard, or even both and look at issues as not black and whit but on a broader spectrum.

We don't. We know what was up, from the highest to the lowest levels of society.
We know what this shit is about, it's only the middle-class soccer-mom and sunglasses hair gel crowd that makes any daily pretense to the goodness of the country.
In spite of this, I'm sitting in a home that my ancestors couldn't imagine with more food for a week than they'd see in months, able to read, write, do math, and many other things they couldn't. Sure, they could farm and hunt and build mud huts but so can I after a week on the job and some googling.
The fact is that yeah, it's an oligarchy, but everyone is fat and happy if they just reach out and try to be.

They had good solid morals but (mostly) didn't realize they needed to expanf their scope beyond white folk. That was based a lot on this idea that blacks were too stupid and backward to operate without white folk holding the reigns.

>How do burgers reconcile with the fact that the Founding Fathers were essentially oligarchs with hundreds of slaves?
Cognitive Dissonance.

You use that same logic for confederates though

It wasn't at the time, no.

It's not something that comes to mind so no one really cares.

America has been shit from start to finish. No surprise there. Just consume more shit, you American retards.

Why didn't Arkansas keep its western half?

Also:
>Arkansaw

>b-but they had slaves

not an argument

>rights for all humans
>niggers aren't humans
Case closed.

>One moral failing?

Well yeah, you can argue whatever you will about its magnitude or plurality, but that doesn't undermine what I was saying. Hell, a person can be almost entirely flawed but still have a completely valid moral point. A person's ideas shouldn't be looked at in a vacuum free of the rest of their context, but a little breathing room is due.

Because owning slaves wasn't wrong

t. George Washington

Owning people was, is and will be wrong. Unless you are morally bankrupt cultural relativist.

Hierarchy is the natural order

Literally under their system most humans living in America had no representation.

Wow, you've really justified the act of raping slaves who happen to be 13!

I'm not that guy, but here's my take.
It's not a vacuum, as he has pointed out, this is the context in which Jefferson lived for his entire life. This is what, in his privacy, he thought that he ought to do.
Also I have a differenr beef, but it is purely speculative, so do not take it too seriously. If Jefferson in his privacy held slaves, brutally punished them and raped some of them, but in public he expressed himself in a benevolent, all-loving manner (at least to its citizen) shouldn't I just assume that he was lying?
For example you call this a moral failing, but what is the extent of said moral failing? Is cheating on your girlfriend as bad as serial killing old ladies in your neighboroud?
I'm also skeptical about calling it "a" moral failing. What if said moral failing presents itself, in the same form, multiple times? For Jefferson slavery wasn't an afterthought: he managed and organized them, he personally punished them and was very careful about breaking up groups once slaves got to know each other. He has probably dedicated a good chunk of his life managing his slaves, so why should I call it "a" moral failing? To me it looks like hundreds of thousands of moral failings, coming one after another, and since the failing in question is brutal slaveowning, I would say that Jefferson is absolutely the last person one should trust in ANY matter. He was clearly a profoundly immoral person, even for the standards of his time.
That said, I'm Italian and we worship ancient genocidal imperialist slaveowners and small time kings who costantly had their peasants dying in absolutely meaningless wars, and I'd say that I've got no problem with it. I'm far more opposed to Italian Fascism, which I guess is the same kind of sentiment other anons in this thread hold against the Founding Fathers, given the fact that much of your patriotic rethoric is still based on their works.

>How do burgers reconcile with the fact that the Founding Fathers were essentially oligarchs with hundreds of slaves?

We pretty much ignore it desu

Slavery per se isn't morally wrong.
It's extremely conductive to bad behavior, which is why we it should remain illegal, but it's not wrong in and of itself.

Guess we can discount all philosophy pre 1920 then huh?

pdcuck

Because owning slaves wasn't contraversial back then. If you were rich, you likely owned slaves too.
>hurr durr why doesn't my 21st century thinking work in the 18th century

>anti-slavery is a direct result of Anglo-Saxon liberalism becoming the dominant ideology of civilization
>retards such as OP in the modern day criticize early liberals for still owning slaves

A better question is: should people totally uneducated in history be allowed to talk about it?

How do you consider yourself a moral entity when you own property made by people a world away being paid pennies for work you'd be paid minimum wage for? Same thing. Slavery was an integral part in at least half the colonies, the South.

The Truth is that many Founding Fathers were in fact Abolitionists who put the cohesiveness of the Revolution over straining relations with the South over Slavery. Even the most fervent Abolitionist Founding Fathers, like John Jay, owned Slaves until the end of his life, yet he was integral to abolishing Slavery in New York by 1829.

You live in this retarded fantasy where you think you can abolish bad things like Slavery without any societal consequences in a night. Why didn't they just turn off the Slavery Machine that had been running since 150 years before they were born?

Imagine being so clueless that you criticize the pioneers of liberalism for not being liberal enough in ending an institution that has existed longer than civilization.

I think the only truly unapologetic Slave Holder among the traditional Founding fathers was Jefferson. I don't remember him being associated with any moral quarrels with his Slave Owning Status, while people like Jay and Washington are always credited with freeing their slaves in their wills.

I wonder why they had Jefferson write the DoC, when he was so clearly anti-Federalist

Slave was seen fine at the time
Kinda like abortion nowdays
Since abortion is objectively an atrocity (and will be recognized as such in the future) and you're okay with it, I guess all your ideas about moral are wrong

You know Jefferson actually fought to stop slave trading? He held slaves yes, but Virginia law at the time didn't allow people to free their slaves.

And yet citizens of the District of Columbia have to pay taxes. Really makes me think.