Posted on 12/14/2018 7:34:29 AM PST by Kaslin
Many of our political differences today stem from different perceptions of American history.
On the surface, it appears as if there's a lot of common ground in understanding that history. Ninety-five percent of voters believe that the founding ideals of freedom, equality and self-governance played an important role (including 74 percent who consider those ideals "very important").
There's also a broad recognition that there are many other strands of history that helped define the United States as a nation. Eighty-eight percent believe the tradition of pragmatic problem-solving played an important role. Seventy-eight percent say the same about the Protestant work ethic and faith; 75 percent recognize that slavery played an important role; 74 percent acknowledge the importance of the political heritage and culture from England; 48 percent believe white supremacy played an important role.
But once you look beneath the surface of that common understanding, it becomes apparent that we're not all looking at the same history. While just about everyone agrees on the vital role played by our noble founding ideals, the same cannot be said about the importance of slavery.
Forty-eight percent of voters under 50 believe slavery played a very important role in the development of our country. Just 34 percent of older voters see it as that significant.
Fifty-two percent of Democrats think slavery has played a very important role in making our nation what it is today. That view is shared by 37 percent of independent voters and 33 percent of Republicans.
Not surprisingly, the racial divide is even wider: 79 percent of black voters say slavery is a very important factor. Forty-eight percent of Hispanic voters agree, along with 33 percent of white voters.
These contrasting perceptions play out in data, which shows that 66 percent of voters are proud of America's history, while 33 percent are ashamed. As you would expect, those who see slavery as playing a larger role are more likely to be ashamed of our nation's history. So, 50 percent of Democrats are ashamed of our history, a view shared by 31 percent of independents and only 14 percent of Republicans.
For understandable reasons, 66 percent of African-American voters are ashamed of the United States' history. At the other end of the spectrum, 74 percent of white voters are proud of the country's history, along with 65 percent of Hispanic voters.
Amid these competing perceptions of our past, there is hope and common ground for the future.
In the competition between the noble founding ideals and shameful history of institutionalized racism, 82 percent of all voters believe the noble strand will dominate American politics in the future. It's a view widely shared across partisan and ideological lines.
Our task today is to make that expectation a reality. Now is the time for the shameful strand of our history to die and the noble strand to flourish. To make this happen, we must be totally committed to shaping the culture by building a society worthy of our highest ideals. It is time to recognize that America's War of Independence and the Civil Rights Movement were part of the same revolution, a revolution for liberty, equality and self-governance.
Those ideals are the essentials we can build upon together while agreeing to disagree on the details of policy.
Some people will never be satisfied, that we have abolished slavery, and worked so hard to eliminate discrimination.
In actuality, what they came up with was a sea change, and the best that could have been accomplished given the times and the circumstances.
Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide.
It would also be instructive to consider the Northwest Ordinance, as an indicator of the mindset of the Founders on Egalitarianism.
No, the founders didn't give a crap about freeing slaves or "civil rights". They were concerned with getting independence from England, and that is all they were concerned with.
On point and accurate as always.
Thank you. The Civil Rights movement called for the greatest limitations on individual liberty. It takes away basic freedoms in the managing of one’s own affairs.
Another Townhall joker hastens the decline of conservative scholarship because he really wants it to be Lyndon Johnson liberalism.
Unlike this Scott Rasmussen, Russell Kirk wrote knowledgeably about the American Revolution.
Kirk called it a “conservative revolution” because the American colonials were seeking to defend their historic rights as Englishmen at a time when King George’s government wasn’t respecting them.
They weren’t social progressives looking to create an improved society. They were defending what they had.
They had been demanding representation in Parliament, and if they couldn’t get that from London they would announce their independence and fight a war of rebellion to get it.
It would also be instructive to consider the Northwest Ordinance, as an indicator of the mindset of the Founders on Egalitarianism.
That is the document that forbade slavery in the territories north of the Ohio, west of the Appalachians and east of the Mississippi River.
Of course, you're off-target as usual. What we are talking about here isn't equality but liberty - equal liberty, the same basic rights for all.
Whatever came out of the Civil Rights movement in the end, the original motivation was liberty, as it was in the American Revolution.
An interesting side-note of history.
Canadian schoolchildren are taught that in 1770, His Majesty's government offered Ben Franklin, the colonial representative to Parliament, a home rule solution, which Franklin rejected. What they aren't taught is that the home rule solution had one gaping flaw: It didn't address the issue of Parliament taxing the colonies.
The Magna Carta stated that an Englishman should be taxed by his peers. A proper solution would have been for Parliament to dun the individual colonies and let the colonies figure out how to pay and levy their own taxes. But Parliament had gotten into the nasty habit of taxing the colonies directly.
Franklin, as was his wont, cut to the heart of the issue. The government of England was fond of saying "an Englishman is an Englishman everywhere he goes in the world." Was an Englishman living in the colonies different from an Englishman living in the Mother Country?
In 1774, Franklin came back with a counteroffer to the home rule proposal: Turn the Parliament of London into the Parliament of Empire. Let the American colonies, Indian colonies and African colonies elect members of Parliament to sit next to members of Parliament elected from the United Kingdom itself. This would end the discussion of separate classes of Englishmen once and for all, and thus end the taxation issue.
Frank had a Rolodex long before that collection of business cards was ever invented. He knew the key players, dined with them, drank with them and swived with them. He knew his proposal was a non-starter. But he was waiting for the key players to say why.
"It would dilute the control of the Mother Country."
Ah, so it was about control! At that point, Franklin understood that independence was the only answer.
One of the what-ifs of history:
Had His Majesty's government been able to see beyond the length of its nose, Franklin's suggestion would have created a cohesive British Empire with teeth. Characters like Napoleon and Hitler would have thought twice before tangling with the British lion.
I thought it had to do with taxation?
But what the revolution involved would become clear in the course of events.
For example, there was no desire to set up an independent country or a constitutional republic in 1775.
The fight was for the rights of Englishmen, not for independence or a different form of government.
In a similar way, many Americans understood their revolution to involve an end to slavery as well as an end to taxation without representation, foreign rule, and monarchy.
The fight was against British Mercantilism.
That’s a very good post. And I’m a tough grader. ;)
Ditto that.
I count as "good" any post where I learn a new word, especially one I probably should have known all along but somehow missed.
"Swived" -- Franklin? Oh yeh.
Well... some of our posters, like DiogenesLamp, like to claim the Declaration's "all men are created equal" was just flowery language, meant nothing really, or was only cynical pandering to lower classes, etc., etc.
I'd say that's totally unfair.
Clearly Founders meant all men were created with equal legal rights to freely "pursue their happiness".
There was no thought that somehow government must make everybody equally well off, such ideas came decades later.
As for slavery, even slaveholding Founders like Washington & Jefferson considered it a moral wrong which should be abolished, eventually.
Washington said he would give up slavery if necessary for the Union.
Jefferson proposed abolition in the Northwest Territories, adopted in 1788, and also national gradual compensated abolition, not adopted due to slaveholders' resistance.
But it took another two generations before slavery was seen as a positive moral good worth destroying the Union over.
Clearly, Jefferson blamed the Brits for imposing slavery on Americans and also for inciting "domestic insurrections".
Some people claim that "domestic insurrections" referred only to slave uprisings, but in fact there were no slave uprisings in 1776 nor did the Brits ever call on slaves to rise & rebel.
What Lord Dunmore did call for in 1776 was for " indentured Servants, Negroes, or others" to join the British army, offering freedom in exchange.
DiogenesLamp: "No, the founders didn't give a crap about freeing slaves or 'civil rights'."
Even in 1776 many Founders understood that slavery was a blight on American ideals and should be eventually abolished.
Slavery was not a reason for declaring independence, but leaders like George Washington were willing to offer slaves freedom in exchange for service in the Continental Army.
One result was a British officer at Yorktown reported that about 1/4 of Washington's army there was black.
Yes it provided that my Ohio would be a free State, but that hardly makes it an egalitarian document. You might look at the suffrage requirement as to that.
The slavery argument is quite independent of whether any American State--in formation--wanted a distant Government redistributing its people's resources. Because we rejected the idea of distant interference did not mean that we were focused on the questions involved in allowing involuntary labor systems. The six States to which you refer had every right, as free & independent States, to interdict involuntary servitude, both on moral & economic grounds.
That does not mean they favored any variety of communistic Egalitarianism.
See Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide.
And remember Magna Carta as a very relevant example, of the compact theory of Government. Jefferson--as the feudal Barons before him--was refuting the need to accord the King's policies as divinely authorized.
Not surprising in an area where there was much open land available.
Those property qualifications would largely be abolished soon enough, in many cases by the same generation that wrote the Constitution.
Notice that the Northwest Ordinance has no racial restriction placed on voting or holding office.
Getting rid of such restrictions - and state-imposed segregation - was what the civil rights was all about, at least in the beginning.
The idea that opposition to government-mandated segregation represented some kind of French Revolutionary Jacobin egalitarianism, let alone anything communistic, is just foolish.
When people assert a general principle, they can expect it to be applied to cases that may not have occurred to them at the time.
If the principles asserted in the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence only applied to White male British colonists living on the Eastern Coast of North America, it would not be as inspiring a document as it is.
And a principle that narrowly restricted, isn't really a principle at all.
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