Please be positive and upbeat in your interactions, and avoid making negative or pessimistic comments. Instead, focus on the potential opportunities.
- Manlobbi
Stocks A to Z / Stocks B / Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A)
No. of Recommendations: 8
Exhibit one in an ongoing series...
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries,
the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled,
it would be more consistent than we called it the word of a demon than the word of God.
It has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind." ~Thomas Paine, Founding Father, political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary.
He authored Common Sense and The American Crisis, two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution,
which inspire the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.
Mike Johnson?
Help, the GOP has fallen and they can't get up.
...facepalm...
No. of Recommendations: 12
Are you an American Patriot?
Thomas Jefferson was...
"Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured,
fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of this coercion?
To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." ~Thomas Jefferson
Ben Franklin was...
"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason." ~Benjamin Franklin
No. of Recommendations: 2
Ben Franklin was...
"The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason." ~Benjamin Franklin
The founders lived during the Age of Reason, where reason triumphed over the divine rule of Kings, and men had rights that spring from nature, and nature's laws.
The "creator" in the Declaration of Independence wasn't just "God", as the Declaration was speaking to the entire world. So if your creator was Allah, then it meant Allah to you, if you believed in a turtle, or a maiden rising from the sea, that's your creator. But faith can blind you to that message, and you will see only God.
No. of Recommendations: 6
Are you an American Patriot?
James Madison was...
"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
~James Madison
Thomas Paine was...
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests." ~Thomas Paine
No. of Recommendations: 6
Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
Diderot
No. of Recommendations: 2
New one to me-
[The three-fifths clause is a] "solemn mockery of and insult to God" and "involved the absurdity of increasing the power of a state ... in proportion as that state violated the rights of freedom." Luther Martin (he owned 6 slaves)
No. of Recommendations: 8
[The three-fifths clause is a] "solemn mockery of and insult to God" and "involved the absurdity of increasing the power of a state ... in proportion as that state violated the rights of freedom."
------------
That single quote is one of the more crucial factoids that every American needs to learn or relearn about American history. I suspect most of us educated before probably maybe 1990 had a curriculum of American history one might term the Immaculate Deception... In other words, approaches for teaching American history essentially started with a permanent moral mulligan for American society. In the grand scope of history, sure, America and Americans might have done some things THEN that look horrible NOW by modern standards. But America and Americans ALWAYS tried to do the RIGHT thing in the context of the times of the past -- some of those things just didn't age well but by golly, when we wisened up, we fixed those bad things.
Slavery was a hot topic in America even prior to 1776, much less 1789 and 1860. Correspondence and letters to local newspapers are replete with opinions expressing the immorality of slavery. Debates that led up to US Version 2.0 in 1789 discussed slavery in exactly these morality compromising terms that would be current today. The founding fathers who proposed the three-fifths language and accepted it in finalizing the Constitution EXPLICITLY understood the immorality and hypocrisy of claiming to found a nation on the idea of personal liberty while simultaneously offering power to southerners based on slave headcount while denying those slaves rights and representation.
The founding fathers were not saints for the generations. They devised a mostly great set of counterbalancing powers and processes ideal for avoiding tyranny and a mostly great set of rules for adapting that system to new circumstances over time. They also made some horrible compromises when choosing the starting point for that system to begin operating. And they failed to understand how corrosive those other compromises (an electoral college, a two-vote per state Senate, initial parliamentary habits that introduced and calcified a flawed two-party system) would be over generations.
WTH
No. of Recommendations: 3
But America and Americans ALWAYS tried to do the RIGHT thing in the context of the times of the past -- some of those things just didn't age well but by golly, when we wisened up, we fixed those bad things.
I believe it was Churchill who said that America can be counted on to do the right thing after exhausting all other options. I think he's more right than you are, even if your stance is similar. His framing of how we do things is more spot-on.
But, yeah...those compromises are biting us now. Well, some of them (electoral college). Others we've dispensed with (3/5 rule).
No. of Recommendations: 1
I’m continually amassed at how people don’t understand the historical context of the 3/5 rule.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Dope:I’m continually amassed at how people don’t understand the historical context of the 3/5 rule.
Since I don't see anyone who has shown they don't understand the historical context in this thread, you appear to be out to lunch Dope.
No. of Recommendations: 0
Since I don't see anyone who has shown they don't understand the historical context in this thread, you appear to be out to lunch Dope.
Sure, Jan.
Let's start with you, since you're a historical scholar (And chose snark as your go-to).
How would the makeup of Congress been affected had slaves been 5 fifths of a person?
No. of Recommendations: 4
Not a historical scholar and not playing your game. I was reading These Truths by Jill Lepore, or rereading, and didn't remember Luther Martin or his quote, but I had highlighted it. :) I think everyone on the thread understand what it was about. Adios.
No. of Recommendations: 1
Not a historical scholar and not playing your game.
Thought so. Thanks for rolling over and showing me your belly.
No. of Recommendations: 2
How would the makeup of Congress been affected had slaves been 5 fifths of a person?
It would have given the Southern states a lot more representatives, and more power. Obviously. Which is exactly what they wanted, and what they proposed. The Northern states didn't want to count them at all because they had no voting rights. It also would have affected their taxes at the time (more people, more tax owed to the feds). Madison ended up proposing the 3/5 compromise that both sides could live with, and detailed his reasoning in Federalists 54 and 55.
(My memory was a little fuzzy on this, so I did look some of this up.)
It is interesting that Madison opposed the African slave trade throughout his life, yet was able to propose that compromise. Today's politicians aren't able to compromise on much of anything, and I would argue that Madison's compromise was far more consequential than (for example) raising taxes on the wealthy.
No. of Recommendations: 2
It would have given the Southern states a lot more representatives, and more power. Obviously. Which is exactly what they wanted, and what they proposed. The Northern states didn't want to count them at all because they had no voting rights. It also would have affected their taxes at the time (more people, more tax owed to the feds). Madison ended up proposing the 3/5 compromise that both sides could live with, and detailed his reasoning in Federalists 54 and 55.
Exactly right.
And if the southern states had had more electoral votes due to their population of slaves - who didn't get to vote - then Congress and the Presidency look much different going forward. Stephen Douglass becomes President instead of Abe Lincoln, for one.
There would also be no Missouri compromise, and that would mean potentially more slave states at northern latitudes.
The folks who pan the 3/5ths compromise should check their knowledge of history...and of the Founding Fathers. Because it's lacking.
No. of Recommendations: 0
The folks who pan the 3/5ths compromise should check their knowledge of history...and of the Founding Fathers. Because it's lacking.
Not necessarily. I object to it as well, from my 21st century perspective. And I more or less know the history. And the ramifications if that compromise wasn't made. It delayed hostilities about 80 years, but we still ended up shedding a lot of blood over it, and then the 3/5 rule was rescinded, and slavery was ended. If the compromise hadn't happened, likely the hostilities would have been almost immediate (~1790). The South would have formed their own system (as they ended up doing in the 1860s).
No. of Recommendations: 0
Not necessarily. I object to it as well, from my 21st century perspective. And I more or less know the history. And the ramifications if that compromise wasn't made. It delayed hostilities about 80 years, but we still ended up shedding a lot of blood over it, and then the 3/5 rule was rescinded, and slavery was ended. If the compromise hadn't happened, likely the hostilities would have been almost immediate (~1790). The South would have formed their own system (as they ended up doing in the 1860s).
If avoiding bloodshed is your main concern, then logically the option to support would have been 5/5 instead of 3/5. It's entirely possible that the southern states could have phased out slavery without a Civil War, albeit after some more years (or perhaps even decades).
No. of Recommendations: 2
It's not my main concern. I was saying "spill it now" (1700s) "or spill it later" (1860s). But it was going to be spilled.
I think that without the Civil War, the South likely would have employed slavery into the 20th century. Maybe even into my lifetime. The South would be a very different place without free black persons, and without free black persons I don't think the South would have been motivated to change. It was the economic backbone of their primary industry (i.e. agriculture), without which it was very difficult to prosper with agriculture. We now often use undocumented workers whom we can pay less (because they can't complain to the authorities). Not exactly slavery, of course. But the economics say that farms and plantations need to use the cheapest labor they can, so they do.
No. of Recommendations: 2
It is interesting that Madison opposed the African slave trade throughout his life, yet was able to propose that compromise.>/i>
Madison originally proposed the 3/5ths compromise under the Articles of Confederation, so it wasn't new. As for Dopes idea of people panning it, Luther Martin was a founding father and an Anti-federalist. Many of the Anti-Federalists were against the 3/5 compromise, but they were against the Constitution. I haven't heard anyone pan it in current times, just wonder what it was about if they haven't heard of it.
So you have to give them a gist of the population, and that non-inheriting sons came over from Barbados and brought the heavy (bad) slave codes with them and by 1750 those slave codes took over throughout the Deep South. Incidentally, by the time of the Civil War, 20% of population the USA was black, and it was the opposite in the 13 colonies in the Caribbean, only 20% was white. So our southern states had developed means to keep the slave rebellions in line, etc., but the 13 colonies in the Caribbean were entirely dependent on the British Military to keep the slaves in line. This I have read to this point.
But you'll have people make the statement online that the United States was the only place to fight a Civil War over slavery,and that every other g compensated people, or voluntarily changed. What is up with the (implied barbaric) USA? I think the reasons were (not limited to) 1. Not dependent on the British military to put down slave rebellions, 2. Cotton was King (Biiiig money), and 3. those fuvkers saw themselves as aristocrats and were hotheads. Hell, the Citadel was started to teach military moves on how to put down slave rebellions.
No. of Recommendations: 6
If avoiding bloodshed is your main concern, then logically the option to support would have been 5/5 instead of 3/5. It's entirely possible that the southern states could have phased out slavery without a Civil War, albeit after some more years (or perhaps even decades).
I don't think so. When Lincoln was elected he had no intention of ending slavery. But what the South wanted was the ability to go into the North and hunt down slaves, penalize and worse anyone assisting slaves, and their normal fair was to take any black men they see even if they were free/ {art pf that was in the Constitution ( another Compromise).
Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3:
No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
They also wanted all new states to be slave states. Since we had stopped the importation of slaves, the slaves in the US were worth more. At the time of the constitution and I think also at the beginning of the Civil War the greatest asset in the US was slaves. They were biiig money. And listen, it just wasn't new states - they wanted to invade Cuba and make it into a slave state. The sent privateers to Cuba and Nicaragua. The Knights of the Golden circle wanted to make slave states surrounding the Caribe. This was actively talked about. Fifty years before the Civil War the South looked on slavery as a necessary evil. But over the course of fifty years the south convinced itself that slavery was a good thing for the slave, it was beneficial, it was right that whites ruled over and enslaved black who could not take care of themselves. It was a benevolent burden. That wasn't going to change easily at all.
No. of Recommendations: 2
If the compromise hadn't happened, likely the hostilities would have been almost immediate (~1790). The South would have formed their own system (as they ended up doing in the 1860s).
And if we hadn't had our glorious revolution we would have gotten rid of slavery sooner: 1834. That's when Britain outlawed slavery in all its colonies.
No. of Recommendations: 0
I don't think so. When Lincoln was elected he had no intention of ending slavery. But what the South wanted was the ability to go into the North and hunt down slaves, penalize and worse anyone assisting slaves, and their normal fair was to take any black men they see even if they were free/ {art pf that was in the Constitution ( another Compromise).
I thought you didn't want to play...? Oh, well. Guess now that you feel you have numbers on your side it's safe for you. But you missed the point.
If slaves are 5 fifths, the south has disproportionate power in Congress and likely wins more Presidencies over time. That also means much more slavery friendly legislation in Congress and more slavery friendly Supreme Court justices.
It was a benevolent burden. That wasn't going to change easily at all.
But it would have. All cultures evolve. Well, mostly.
No. of Recommendations: 3
No point was missed Dope. Ar the time of the Constitution, the founders thought slavery would disappear in the next 15 years. Slavery was becoming unprofitable in the North, so slaves were being sold South. The invention of the Cotton Gin, changed that, and Cotton became King. Slavery now became really profitable for many. So your 5/5 hypo would have had to have been done at the time of the Constitution, not when slavery was in its heyday - not likely, as you can see 3/5 was good then.
If you think an amendment for 5/5 can be passed later, again - not likely. No one ever gives up an advantage for free , there would need to be a Quid pro Quo.
