Why should we care what the Founding Fathers wanted?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Why should we care what the Founding Fathers wanted?

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hepatizon posted:

There is a good reason to invoke the Founders: to remind people that the American system of government exists to fulfill a certain defined purpose, and not just for self-perpetuation.

That defined purpose being the self-perpetuation of the economic interest of white male landowners (who may also have held certain people of a dark complexion as laborers)? :ussr:

# ¿ May 18, 2014 07:49

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 08:08

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Last Buffalo posted:

How would you teach a class on Jefferson and the slave-owning founding fathers? I think ignoring the issue of slavery would be criminal, but so would saying they're as bad as Hitler.

I think it would depend on the level of education as well as just how narrow it is. If you're studying these men specifically, versus using these men as a lens on American history during that period; if it's explicitly just slave-owning founding fathers versus the founding fathers generally, etc. A history of the institution of slavery in the Americas could be very interesting but would, of course, need to be at the college level given its high degree of specificity.

I would say that the largest issue with this, and with a lot of other historical monsters, is that in a certain analysis you can probably say that literally every human being save a few enlightened boddhisattva types (and perhaps even they) before some time in the 20th century was a horrible monster, no exceptions - they were complicit even if they weren't directly involved.

I don't think this is a useful perspective for considering historical matters. For one thing it tends to imply that we're somehow much more virtuous in this present day, which may be true in aggregate through slow accretion (chattel slavery exists only in some limited areas; homosexual rights are on the rise; women's rights are recognized far more widely than they were outside of a few cultures pre-20th century) but does not mean we are at the End of History, with only the upward-treading path ahead of us.

For another, and this is totally a higher-order curriculum goal, I don't think that orienting any sort of educational activity towards inducing disgust and horror is a good idea, outside of very narrow situations such as denazification or whatever. This does not mean you support the awful things they did, but you have to actually look at them and their context - which can explain, if not excuse, various evil acts. (To be clear by "explain" I mean "describe and consider the economic, cultural, etc. factors that led to A Horrible Thing," not "justify.")

Last Buffalo posted:

Ok, by how would you prefer the biography of Jefferson read? He was a vile manic, a saint, a monster? What would you describe him as?

The sad fact is that America was built by slavery and genocide for a long time. We're still not great about treating people as they should be treated, but thing have changed, even improved over the past 400 years, and if you want to account for why, you have to include Jefferson in that to a degree. Not that you shouldn't bring up the stuff he did that held us back.

You can probably consider Jefferson's political thought largely divorced from his situation if you're considering ideas alone. Similarly, his slaveholding probably did not directly cause him to institute the famous Embargo. I would say that it would be difficult to paint his personal life in a biographical sense as anything much positive due to all that slave-holding, though.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 07:08 on May 21, 2014

# ¿ May 21, 2014 07:02

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Pauline Kael posted:

Off topic, but I'm rather fascinated by that era. It was said that a woman would walk nude from the urals to the pacific without fear, Ghengis ran a tight ship, and for a 'barbarian' had some pretty progressive policies for that day. Besides, of course, the wholesale slaughter of entire cities.

A decent intro to them is Dan Carlin's podcasts on them, I think there were 3 episodes dedicated to the Mongols. Not serious history, but super entertaining and give a nice picture of the Mongols as they emerged onto the world stage and ultimately went away.

The Vikings/Norse are also much maligned but were actually a pretty solid set of folks. Not as clean as the Muslims but who's perfect? What's a bit interesting to me is that they did have contact with at least some native american groups; granting that the Inuit groups they ran into in Greenland and Vinland probably didn't have the webs of commerce that the Aztecs or the North Americans did, it's surprising they didn't pass on smallpox and such to them as well. It would have been a rather different set of Americas had they had three hundred years to rebuild from Euro diseases, wouldn't it?

# ¿ May 22, 2014 17:51

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twodot posted:

The US would have definitely genocided the Native Americans with or without Jefferson, because it was (and is) run by a bunch of assholes. My knowledge of German history is not nearly good enough to guess at whether the holocaust would have happened without Hitler, but Hitler didn't spring into existence fully formed, and he didn't utilize mind control technology to convince everyone that his ideas were good, so I wouldn't be surprised either way. No one is claiming that Jefferson==Hitler, that is a dumb strawman, we all know they are different people (you can tell because they have different letters in their names!).

Ok, now that the question is answered. Why the gently caress does this dumb counterfactual matter?

It seems very unlikely that the general course of the American treatment of the native nations would have been much different even with different leadership. It might well have been more humane, and it's possible that the tribal groups that survived to the 20th century would have been treated better and had more wealth, resources, support, etc.; it's also quite plausible that there would have been no reservations, and they would have been largely wiped out, save perhaps the groups in the far West, such as the Navajo. Maybe not even then.

This doesn't seem like it excuses Jefferson's contributions of course. There would seem to be little burden to having assimilated the Cherokee and treating them as brothers, which the Cherokee themselves were clearly trying to do; however, the rapacious thirst for FREE LAND (often explicitly for the purpose of using slave labor to farm cash crops) drove that decision.

However, I think that you can make a better case, if we must compare and contrast T-Jeff and Big Dolph, that Jefferson was not initiating new and vicious actions. Jefferson had a long life as an influential member of his class, which included several neutral or positive contributions, such as founding a university, that Declaration thing, etc. I don't think it is somehow wrong to highlight the positive things here in the context of teaching small children, though I don't think his ownership of slaves or treatment of natives should be hidden, save to the extent consistent with grade-appropriate information. "Jefferson was a thoughtful man and made many arguments for the colonies' freedom, but he also owned a great many slaves, despite that" seems to introduce the facts and the inherent paradox there, without either subjecting second graders to a discourse on slave rape or being a titanic bring-down Betty (or, the unstated third rail, setting the PTA after you, the hypothetical schoolteacher.)

Anyway, Jefferson, for all the evil things he did, did not seem to innovate in his evil acts the way Hitler and his cronies did.

I myself am not persuaded by the theory that there is some deep-rooted exterminationalist impulse that is inherent to the Germans that wasn't also arguably true about the English (witness the colonies! Jefferson was basically an Englishman, after all) or the French (one fellow said once 'if you told me after the Great War that in the next European war, a major power would seek to murder all of Europe's Jews, I would say: Nobody could be surprised at the depths to which France can sink'). Some new European war, probably involving Germany, was pretty drat likely, but there was no great clamoring demand for "mounds of dead Jews" the way there was for "stealing the Indian land" or even "killing our political enemies."

Jastiger posted:

!!!DOUBLE POST!!!

The one angle I can see the US being uniquely evil in that the very ideas upon which it was supposedly founded were immediately and completely refuted in the actions of its own states.

For the Mongols their motto is kinda "We are going to rape, pillage, and kill everyone to make our Mongol empire the greatest in the world!" Nothing in there about equality to every citizen, fair representation, or non violent means to solving proplems.

The US has all the good flowing stuff about men created equal, and fair treatment by the government, and a more perfect union, etc. It directly contradicts itself in an Orwellian fashion from Day 1.

Which is worse? The villain that cackles gleefully as he murders the innocent, or the handsome clean shaven knight that convinces you it was for their own good?

The contradiction wasn't even some great mystery that only came to light in the blessed glow of our modern day. At the time English people were saying, "why do we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?" and of course A. Lincoln spoke at length about how slavery, as well as the insolence of the slave power, was destroying the image of democracy and liberty.

Basically, our history books need to suck the dicks of New-England abolitionists and Honest Abe more than that of a pack of slave-driving plantation owners, if we're going to suck anyone's dicks.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 20:09 on May 22, 2014

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:05

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Pauline Kael posted:

Chattel slavery was certainly NOT uncommon in history. That's dumb. Name me 3 recorded societies previous to the 18th century that didn't have chattel slavery.

As far as the white supremacist stuff, I'd argue that that was represented historically in the old world as more of a cultural chauvinism, not necessarily skin color based, but more tribal. Certainly my Celtic ancestors, while white, got swept aside by the Francs and God knows who else, for being in the wrong tribe. That any survived is probably more a tribute to the fact that nobody wanted to live in the God forsaken places they ended up.

The institution of chattel slavery in the American South (and a lot of the Americas by extension) was kind of uniquely awful compared to Roman slavery, being a thrall in Norse Europe, serfdom, corvee labor in Imperial China, etc. While there were certainly many elements in common and I am not somehow asserting that all those other things were "good," you usually had limited legal rights and privileges, in practice or in theory; alternately, your situation was at least bounded somehow... you had to work three months on the roads, yes, but then it ended. As a serf you had to work for your lord, but there were objective ways to gain freedom from those services, if difficult ones.

American chattel slavery did not do that; it defined a system of indentured service which happened to include some black people into a permanent, commodified caste system. What is more, the American Southerners drat well knew better - you could claim a Roman would have difficulty concieving of having no slaves whatever with some justice, I expect - and built up an ideological structure to defend their horrible system and try to turn it into some greater good, which we see in so many of the attested Confederate documents.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:17

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Pauline Kael posted:

So in your mind because slavery existed, the United States should not have? Would slavery have gone away if the colonies had never formed a nation?

The FFs knew that if they tried to address slavery in the early republic that it never would have gotten past go, in no small part because many of them were slaveholders themselves. Yes, we all understand that. Is you contention that it would have been better for the US to not exist then? I imagine that would be pretty popular in D&D, but its the dumbest sort of alt-history.

I think organized chattel slavery would have eventually faded out if the colonies had remained a British territory; there was huge popular pressure in that direction in England, at least. I think the institution would have been rendered extinct, though of course its effects would remain.

It's hard for me to say "it would be better if the US hadn't existed," however, because slavery was already established at the time. I imagine that had the US not been founded, or not founded the way it was, slavery might have withered sooner, and there might not have been the effloresecnce of horrible poo poo that the South generated. I don't see why it's necessarily a "dumb" form of alternate history, because it's entirely conjectural at that point; we can probably guess that other events would have proceeded as they did in reality until about the middle of the 19th century, at which point "who knows." Maybe Greater Pennsylvania would have achieved full communism by now.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:24

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Pauline Kael posted:

Are you stating, just so I'm clear, that American chattel slavery was worse than other historical instances of such slavery? Uniquely worse?

I would say yes, if you define "American" to include the various horrible things the Spanish did in the 16th century. I would imagine this is where you're aiming at.

I would say, institutionally, that the specifically "Southern US enslavement of black people" system was likely the worst system, even if it had a lower body count, because the Spanish were not energetically constructing a system to justify and glorify the permanent enslavement of Indians in perpetuity as being for their own good. I believe, had the Confederates won the Civil War or even 'lost' it quickly enough for the institution of slavery to survive, there would STILL be black people, openly held as property in slaves, in the South.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:39

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Ytlaya posted:

When you're talking about events that resulted in killing/displacing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, I would think that understating their severity is far, far worse than potentially overstating it.

I mean, poo poo, what exactly is the harm if people think "Both the holocaust and the eradication/removal of native americans were unmeasurably horrific atrocities"? Are you worried that people in the future are going to decide to commit a second holocaust with the rationale "eh, it's only as bad as the mass ethnic cleansing of native americans."

I think the concern is in the other direction, which is that both of them get met with a shrug, possibly followed by a stone through the Ikeys' dumb fake church window. As old Adolf said himself, "Who cares about the Armenians nowadays, am I right?"

rkajdi posted:

Why does this matter? The solution to slavery is simply free your slaves (and understand that they may just kill you for what you did to them) not come up with some complex structure to spool it down safely. Seriously, acting like you get to keep your unjust gains while half-fixing the problem is the stupidest thing humans as creature do, and we do it continually.

This is the simplest solution but, as you note if indirectly, contains certain obstacles to its direct implementation. It would have been far more just, if with the risk of creating some kind of irredentist population, if the Union Army had just given various liberated plantations and their equipment to the various slaves who occupied them. Guaranteeing safety with some baggage to an area well away from your former 'property' would have likely been pragmatically helpful, too.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 20:55 on May 22, 2014

# ¿ May 22, 2014 20:51

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rkajdi posted:

I know you're being sarcastic, but it really hit me the first time I took a decent history class in college how much great man bullshit was shoveled down my throat before that. Do people really think we need to assume the Great Men who came before us were decent people, instead of the monsters they were to man? I guess it's partially teaching deference to authority, but we can instill that without the lies.

I see two advantages to using a fair amount of biography in history.

One is of course that they make good stories which can provide helpful hooks into other subjects. You could use Thomas Jefferson as a centerpiece for studying all sorts of early US history, and not even in a necessarily laudatory way. Many of these things become easier, more approachable, when humanized thus: hell, look at the "Ask a Slave" videos (seriously, they're hilarious).

The other is that if we attribute everything entirely to impersonal economic forces we put the present off the hook. (This is not to say that those forces do not play a role, and perhaps the decisive role, of course.)

# ¿ May 22, 2014 21:20

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rkajdi posted:

I dunno, it gives people the idea that some superman is going to come along and save them, instead of realizing that at best he's going to create a pile of skulls while sort of failing to make things better on the margin. It could be just my perspective, but trying to act like the men that lead and have led us are anything but flawed and pretty awful seems a little daft. I mean, we call a normal person a murderer after they kill one person, and can you think of a leader who got to the top and ruled without being involved in the death of even one person?

I think you could argue just as coherently that you're saying "any leader is essentially automatically an awful loony who's going to kill a lot of people," and it seems a lot more likely that this would develop into "the people who disagree pick their leader, who breaks your nose if he feels like it" than "peacefully decentralized mutual respect and self-reliance."

I'm not arguing for worship of Great Men or anything, so much as that I think biographical treatment of influential figures is an OK and useful thing for historical study and education.

Also, I believe Abe Lincoln wasn't involved in the death of anyone before he became the last good Republican president. :smugdog:

Or at least you'd have to extend his "involvement in death" to the point where it would be "every white person in the United States," which, while perhaps not indefensible, does seem to enter the area of "quasi-Buddhist philosophical statement" rather than "indictment of chief leadership figures."

# ¿ May 22, 2014 21:41

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McDowell posted:

What item is on either side of the dais in this chamber?

An rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ May 22, 2014 23:29

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Install Windows posted:

Uh, dude, America treated Stalin as a bro for about 4 years, before mid 1941 and after mid 1945 Stalin was definitely in the top 5 most hated.

Not only that, but to this day you have a significant number of people who insist we were on the wrong side of WWII, because we neglected the real threat of Soviet Communism.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 02:23

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archangelwar posted:

Or we could have had a stronger federal government that spent less time concerning itself with appeasing the Southern states. We could probably come up with a million alternative universe fantasies if you like.

Studying other trends, it kind of depends if the revolution fails or if it simply never gets round to happening.

If it fails it's possibly better, because it's likely that there would have been reprisals on the Southern colonies which would lead to the damaging of slavery, which in turn would likely have decayed yet further when the British abolished slavery. It does not seem likely that the British would execute hugely devastating reprisals on the colonies after winning the war, given the situation in Europe then current and the fact that you could make a good case that it was a relatively small portion.

This would lead to the 13 colonies being politically very similar to the Canadian colonies, which means you might have a super-Canada now. In the Southwest, Mexico might have done much better, and could be substantially larger, including much of the American west and the gulf coast. Mexico, for all its many faults, has not been very pro-slave in recent years, and it seems likely that what Britain did not break down, might have been broken down under the fashionable boot of Santa Anna.

Honestly this seems like a better outcome overall, though I suppose it's not impossible that you'd have gotten wildcat settlers or something filling up the area west of the Mississippi. Then again, perhaps with more time and the greater degree of British control, the Native nations could have formed confederacies and more robust political entities. You might have a north American which was Megacanada in the North/Northeast, Mexico in the south/southwest, perhaps a restless nucleus where the Southern states are now, and some Native states on the west coast.

Who knows? But this piece of fanfiction seems at least as plausible as 'warring balkanized states, no anglophonic North American colossus to do the various blessings of America in the 20th century'.

Pauline Kael posted:

This is the problem. I, and lots of other Americans, have family that were effected by the Holocaust. Literal blood relatives that got tossed in the ovens. You think it odd that something that's still in immediate memory for millions of Americans, horror caught on film for all to still see today, has a larger cultural effect than what happened 200+ years ago to a group that's pretty fundamentally out of the picture today? Are you dumb?

I also have relatives who were turned into Eastern European air pollution. I don't think anyone is somehow asserting that Holocaust museums or memorialization is bad; it is when the Holocaust is given a status which degrades and de-legitimizes the sufferings of others that it becomes horrible. Would it not be better for Holocaust memorials to use their organizational expertise and influence to bring light upon the others who have lost their children and their millions? Granted they would likely focus on their own people! That is not wrong; but it is not like there is some sort of zero-sum memorialization going on, where every solemn thought given to a Cherokee or a starved Irishman is taken from a murdered Jew.

Nessus fucked around with this message at 18:58 on May 23, 2014

# ¿ May 23, 2014 18:55

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Amused to Death posted:

Mexico already has three of these things(maybe not a bounty compared to the US, but at least more than many nations, namely oil and silver come to mind).

My understanding is that had the US had somewhat worse administration, and Mexico somewhat better administration, their positions might well have been reversed.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 20:23

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 08:08

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Last Buffalo posted:

Dude, if the US became a bunch of competing Balkan states in the 1820s, they would be shoving each other out of the way to kidder Indians and take their land. I don't buy slavery engine easier either.

I won't defend the US policy as anything but genocidal, so many sources across so much time have outright called for the destruction Indians outright. For much of American history, that was the intent of just about any community that lived beside Indians.i don't think that would change if the British had been in charge, or there were competing smaller states.

I recall that one of the bones the colonies had to pick with England is that England actually wanted them to at least pretend to respect treaties with the Indians, and not just start murdering their way into homesteading Ohio. It might have been impossible to completely prevent that, if we diverge around the revolutionary war, but it wasn't somehow an edict that they would automatically go forth and do that, like an expanding gas in a vacuum flask.

# ¿ May 23, 2014 21:48

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