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What if my ancestors didn't own slaves, and in fact fought to free them? Do I get a prize?
They weren't a problem when they were slaves. Your ancestors fighting to free them are why we're in this mess.
Slavery was a bad idea, and should never have been implemented. You might as well blame Kulaks and wreckers for the failures of Communism. Your ancestors should, in fact, have picked their own damn cotton.
You call it slavery, I call it animal husbandry. It worked just fine and while cruelty to animals sucks, domestication is not evil. Often it's a pretty great deal for the animals. Nature is harsh and wild animals are generally worse to each other than their human masters.
My ancestors are at fault inasmuch as they failed to adequately anticipate the fatal flaw in voting-based government, which is the incentive to expand the franchise to those who should never have had it in exchange for political support and dominance over the responsible opponents who refuse to stoop so low.
Humans aren't animals. Animals can be safely disregarded. Humans cannot. That is the distinction.
And yet, they don't seem to have appreciated it, and because they are humans and not actually animals, their lack of appreciation is in fact dispositive.
I do not believe Abolitionism won because its supporters expected to reap new voters. All evidence I've seen indicates that it won because its supporters considered chattel slavery an intolerable evil, and were willing to make considerable sacrifices to eradicate it. I believe they were correct in this estimation. If you wish to disregard the humanity of Africans, I certainly cannot stop you. Leave them in Africa, and it's no business of mine what happens on the other side of the world. Bring them here and you make them, and by extension yourself, my problem.
I know you know you're arguing by defining things in a way I wouldn't agree with, so what's the point?
That was the popular justification, yes, and for the same reason that people become vegetarians or vegans or join PETA and try to ban pet ownership: we're incredibly prone to anthropomorphizing animals.
The power politics behind the war were rather different. Regardless, my point has less to do with why the war was fought and more to do with what happened afterward. "Send them back to their native habitat" was a great idea with plenty of support and should have happened, though FWIW I think we owed it to them to administrate for their sakes. Whatever they are, they're close enough to us that I don't like the thought of leaving them to their own wretched devices. Perhaps in time, and with guidance...
But even people who cared very much for them often understood that treating them as equals, let alone giving them the franchise, would be insane. But it happened. So with women &c.
You offered an implicit argument by definition by calling blacks animals. I pointed out a salient distinction between humans, including black humans, and animals: humans, including black humans, have awareness, will and volition, and so they cannot safely be discounted under any system mankind has yet devised. The only truly safe human is a dead human, and the dead cannot be enslaved.
I am not arguing by definition. You are, and you are refusing to address a salient distinction that your definition cannot account for.
You argue that they are animals, and yet you are unwilling to treat them like animals. Why? Your "guidance" didn't work before and won't work now. Why persist in your folly?
It isn't about caring or not caring. My care leads me to wish to leave them alone. Your care demands domination, and has led to this disaster every step of the way. I certainly have no interest in joining you in your folly, or of protecting your from its consequences.
The franchise is largely irrelevant. What's killing it would have killed it regardless, although racial and sexual politics clearly accelerate the process.
I don't really understand what you think animals are or why they wouldn't have awareness, will, and volition. It seems pretty clear to me that they do.
Compassion, which I have for plenty of other animals as well.
It didn't? I think it did.
I think that would be incredibly cruel.
I just have no idea what you're talking about.
We can cage animals indefinitely. We cannot cage humans indefinitely. It's a bit unfair to claim that no state based on slavery has ever survived long-term, because no state has ever survived long-term, but states that came to depend on slavery consistently experience serious, long-term problems with stability caused by trying to keep a large population of hostiles intimately intermixed with their society. To the extent that this has been maintained for any significant length of time, the tradeoffs pretty clearly aren't worth it.
Your compassion for other animals results in benign neglect. Why is that not good enough in the case of blacks?
Slavery resulted in catastrophic failure in Haiti, and it resulted in a less-catastrophic but still quite thorough failure in America. Slavery demands repugnant levels of tyranny over fellow humans, such that slavers couldn't convince non-slavers to adopt the practice or even to tolerate it long-term. Doing horrible things to blacks to keep them from doing possibly-less-horrible things to each other is not an obvious win, to put it mildly. "domestication" since then has been a complete failure. The black underclass remains a mess. Harsh measures aren't an improvement, and less-harsh measures clearly don't work. The premise is invalidated by the accumulation of actual evidence. We should let the blacks choose whether to follow society's rules among us, or follow their own rules among themselves. Those who wish can be productive citizens, and the rest can do as they please away from the rest of us, black and white alike.
Then make your case to the blacks themselves, and let them choose voluntarily if they agree with you. I doubt they're interested, but am happy to be proven wrong.
People justified slavery, claiming it was for the slaves' benefit. It wasn't, and that's why slavery brings serious, unsustainable problems wherever it is implemented. People have claimed and continue to claim that some people are fundamentally more people than others, and that the lesser sort can be manipulated and shaped according to their betters' preferences. This view is unsupportable from an evidentiary perspective, and disastrous from a historical perspective.
Consider the Swiss. They do not enslave, and they do not rule. They keep to themselves, defend themselves, and let the rest of the world enjoy their benign neglect. Why should anyone prefer to do other than as the Swiss do?
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