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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   28950 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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To repeat another comment I just made: I didn't point this out but it adds another explanation for why Rufo is so motivated to avoid conceding the "Jefferson was a racist" position, because then it would necessarily follow that "maybe some CRT advocates might have a point". Now, normally this shouldn't be such a cataclysmic event but it is for Rufo because he's an activist who has seen a significant rise in his national profile precisely from speaking in absolutes like this. He can't deploy nuance and so it has to be all-out total war and CRT advocates are not just wrong, but wrong about everything.

I mean, it seems obvious to me that you are simply correct here. The founding fathers were by and large racists. America was in fact founded on something reasonably described as white supremacy. The CRT people, speaking strictly about those historical facts, have a point. Rufo won't admit that fact because it badly undermines his position.

What, in your view, is Rufo's position, strictly speaking?

I note that a lot of people here seem very reluctant to draw the above conclusions. Why do you suppose that is?

America was in fact founded on something reasonably described as white supremacy.

That's the error. Even if the founding fathers were white supremacists, they were much more other things, and those other things were what the country was founded on. To say "America was founded on white supremacy" is to imply that its foundation is composed mostly of white supremacist ideals.

Even if the founding fathers were white supremacists, they were much more other things, and those other things were what the country was founded on.

This must be that nuance @ymeskhout was talking about. You try and sell that line to the public, tell me how it goes.

That's the error.

I disagree.

There's a socio-political token "racism", and there's a socio-political token "Thomas Jefferson", and the idea the Blues are positing is that there's better common ground available burning the "Thomas Jefferson" token and coordinating our cooperation around the "racism" token. The idea you're positing is that you can keep them from burning the "Thomas Jefferson" token by pointing out what an absolutely terrible idea it is. But the Scorpion's response is going to be "lol, LMAO", and at this point you really should know that and have planned accordingly.

The error is acting as though there's a conversation worth having with Blues about "racism" at all, that this is some sort of misunderstanding and a little more nuance (man, I love this word!) will sort it out. Thomas Jefferson was a racist and a slaveowner; why deny it? Because you value the Constitution? Because you think there's a nation here with a rich history that might be a little tarnished, but it's still worth saving? Sure. Sure! If you still believe that, you go give it your very best try. Rufo is, certainly, which is why he's embarrassing himself on camera, trying to deny obvious historical truths in a vain attempt to defend the foundations of liberal ideology, because he knows the nuance you're pitching, no matter how truthful, is as good as slitting his own throat. His answer looks kinda not-great to people who watch the video and can follow the arguments, which is essentially no one. Your way, that clip would be the most famous thing he ever said, permanently.

From a strategic perspective, sure, but as far as the actual truth goes, America wasn't founded on white supremacy any more than it was founded on bloodletting. From a strategic perspective, in a debate you just go for the most slimy manipulative deceitful things you can say that will get your opponent into an inconvenient bind. I responded to your object level statement:

The CRT people, speaking strictly about those historical facts, have a point. Rufo won't admit that fact because it badly undermines his position.

with my own object-level statement, which is that they actually don't have a point.

but as far as the actual truth goes, America wasn't founded on white supremacy any more than it was founded on bloodletting.

At the founding, America's legal, social and political systems allowed black people to be owned as property, and the first immigration act specifically discriminated in favor of white people. Several of the founding fathers owned slaves; most of them appeared to hold views on race that would certainly mark them as central examples of white supremacists in our own time.

How is a group of white supremacists intentionally building a new legal system that enshrines white supremacy into law not "founded on white supremacy"?

You can say they were "much more other things". Much more how? It seems to me that this is a statement of subjective value, and there is no obvious reason to expect others to share it. A murderer likely spends a very small percentage of his time killing people, and yet we find that small percentage of killing the most salient aspect of his character. It does not seem obviously unreasonable to take the same approach with slavers.

To say accurately what the US was founded on, we should look at what the system was like before independence was declared and why they declared independence and fought a war against the most powerful army of the time for it.

The founders wrote the Declaration of Independence to proclaim their reasons for claiming it. It's published, you can go read it here. You'll see that it says nothing at all about slavery or race - it's all about civil rights, taxes, and various details about how the government works. Those were their beefs with the British system, not anything about slavery or race.

Indeed, it would be pretty weird for anything like that to be in there, considering that slavery and racism were near-universally approved of in those days. The British certainly had no problem with it at the time, and neither did any of the other colonizing powers. A claim that America was "founded on white supremacy" would only be accurate if the primary reason for declaring independence was that the British demanded that they tolerate colored people and they were sufficiently opposed to that to make war based upon it.

The founders wrote the Declaration of Independence to proclaim their reasons for claiming it. It's published, you can go read it here. You'll see that it says nothing at all about slavery or race - it's all about civil rights, taxes, and various details about how the government works. Those were their beefs with the British system, not anything about slavery or race.

Indeed it does not. The original draft contained this passage:

He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

...Which was then excised, with the (perhaps reluctant) consent of its author, because it was getting in the way of the independence effort. Faced with a choice between the respective tyrannies of the British crown and chattel slavery, they chose to embrace the latter to better fight the former. The document says nothing about slavery because many of them found the compromise shameful, but it's still the compromise they chose to make.

Okay so that's saying that some of the founders did find slavery abhorrent. I don't see how that proves your point though. They all appear to have united behind their cause primarily because they found political tyranny abhorrent. The fact that disliking slavery was a minority viewpoint which they chose to compromise on in order to achieve their primary objective of classical liberalism shows that that was indeed their primary objective. I'd say it shows the opposite of what you claim - the British showed little objection to slavery and the slave trade at the time (they wouldn't start to seriously oppose it until decades later), but at least some of the founders did oppose it, so they were at least slightly less "racist" and "white supremacist" than was the norm at the time.

Okay so that's saying that some of the founders did find slavery abhorrent.

Just not abhorrent enough to do anything about.

They all appear to have united behind their cause primarily because they found political tyranny abhorrent.

They found the political tyranny of modest taxation and less-than-perfectly-favorable administrative status more abhorrent than unaccountable ownership of millions of human beings.

The fact that disliking slavery was a minority viewpoint which they chose to compromise on in order to achieve their primary objective of classical liberalism shows that that was indeed their primary objective.

What is the difference between your phrasing above, and "they founded the country on White Supremacy"? Figuring out a workable accommodation with White Supremacy was probably the largest and most significant issue involved in uniting the States.

The British showed little objection to slavery and the slave trade at the time (they wouldn't start to seriously oppose it until decades later), but at least some of the founders did oppose it, so they were at least slightly less "racist" and "white supremacist" than was the norm at the time.

That is not my understanding of the history. The British had their abolitionists as well at the time of the founding, so "some of the founders opposed it" gives no advantage; some of the British did too. Further, the founders who opposed it abandoned all substantive opposition to get independence done, and in so doing enshrined and armored the institution of slavery well beyond what it would have been while remaining part of the British empire. It may be presumed that if independence had not happened, slavery would have ended in Britain on roughly the same timetable, and the colonies would not have been exempted. Slavery would have ended something like two generations earlier, with no Civil War, no Jim Crow and so on.

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