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triceratops a day ago | parent | next [-]

> Such mass fratricide for the sake of non-kin was completely unprecedented in history. Africans never did that. Middle Easterners never did that. Asians never did that.

That also means that only in America brother fought against brother to preserve slavery. Not something to brag about.

Most of these other countries were able to abolish slavery* without having half their population preferring fratricide over freeing their slaves.

Even in the New World other states just abolished slavery with far less bloodshed. Example A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism_in_Brazil

> One where (mostly British) Americans killed hundreds of thousands of their own cousins to free enslaved people belonging an entirely different ethnic group

A quote from The Great Emancipator's inaugural address: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." [1]

Abolition wasn't the war aim at the outset. Preserving the Union was Lincoln's goal. He did everything he could to prevent the slave states from seceding.

Abolition became a goal halfway through the war.

"The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free". [2]

Which makes sense. If half your countrymen are driven to take up arms against the other half just to keep some people in bondage, you may as well end that evil institution. Otherwise they're bound to try again.

*With varying degrees of success in the actual implementation.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln#Secession_and_...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War

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rayiner 21 hours ago | parent [-]

You're ignoring the context of the point--it's not about "bragging." We were discussing the quote above that someone is "disenfranchised" by adhering to the original meaning of the constitution "roughly in proportion to how much they share in common with" "white men." But following that logic to its conclusion leads to absurd results.

By that logic, non-white people would have been less "disenfranchised" if the constitution had been written by people who matched their skin color. But, in fact, that's not true! Slavery was abolished in Africa by force by the British Empire, or else in the 20th century due to international pressure. Those societies never developed large-scale indigenous movements to abolish slavery. So if you were an enslaved person in America, you would have been worse off if the constitution had been written by people from your country of origin! Your best-case scenario would have been to have more of the colonies be populated by Puritans and Quakers, who ultimately proved willing to kill other British people to end the practice of slavery. But Puritans and Quakers were "white" too!

The point is that principles transcend race, and focusing on skin color similarity with the founders (or lack thereof) is sophomoric. The constitution was written by "white" men, but the people living under it today are the spiritual and cultural descendants of those men--even the ones who superficially resemble the African and Middle Eastern counterparts of the American founders.

	▲	triceratops 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I didn't really follow the long discussion thread y'all were having. I just dislike Civil War revisionism and interjected with a correction. For me, the British Empire's battle against the Atlantic Slave trade is a worthier example of Western (and especially Anglo) abolition efforts than your example of the American Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron

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TimorousBestie 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Your second paragraph does not make the argument you seem to intend. Most other places in the world did not require an incredibly bloody civil war in order to (partially) abolish slavery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...

> Those cultures didn’t think slavery was wrong.

Southern antebellum culture was so beyond the pale it not only “didn’t think slavery was wrong,” it thought slavery was so good and so fundamental to its way of life that “mass fratricide,” as you put it, was preferable to abolition.

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45407005

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datsci_est_2015 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What’s the endgame of your argument here? It reeks of American exceptionalism of the type where its citizenry is not allowed to critically assess the effectiveness of its systems because other systems are somehow worse in some facets. This entire response is whataboutism.

Should disenfranchised Americans simply roll over because there are people more disenfranchised in other places in the world? Are some forms of disenfranchisement more acceptable than others? E.g. as long as we can narrowly interpret the words of the founding fathers (originalism) to be in favor of it?

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coldtea 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>You’re complaining about where the founders didn’t follow their principles to their logical conclusions. But you overlook that you’re using the founders’ own principles to criticize how they fell short

Which is irrelevant, since it's not their influence on modern principles and their related concepts that's in question, but to whether "a constitution interpreted precisely as written by wealthy, landed 18th century white men disenfranchises every person who is not a wealthy, landed 18th century white man, roughly in proportion to how much they share in common with such a person.

It's precisely to the degree we don't interpet the consitution "as written by wealthy, landed 18th century white men", and, for example, extend it to women, blacks, the non land-owning poor, etc, that's

So, again: if you lived in a place that interpreted the constitution exactly in the way the "wealthy, landed 18th century white men" wrote it and interpreted it, e.g. as not incompatible with no-universal vote, few women rights, slavery and seggregation, and no free-speed by the way, would you be disenfrancized or not?

It's not the "Fathers" that de-disenfranchized the modern masses. It's people (including blacks) fighting, establishing newer protections, ammendments, and laxer interpretations, contrary to what the "wealthy, landed 18th century white men" constitutional practice was.

> You can’t even articulate the complaints you’re making using concepts indigenous to Asia, Africa, or the Middle East.

Ah, moving the goalposts again, from just the Constitution to also including Europe (which hopefully I established did many of these things first, and some better, and some much much earlier), the new ask being to find similar things "indigenous to Asia, Africa, or the Middle East".

Which exist. Even in ancient practices. And not just Greeks and Romans. Public deliberation, assemblies, and criticism of those in power have been found as practices all around the world, from egalitarian indigenous societies, even when not having a shorthand rallying cry like "free speech".

>You talk about slavery. But the countries those slaves were from enslaved their own people and sold them to America. Those cultures didn’t think slavery was wrong.

That's not an argument about how those "wealthy, landed 18th century white men" didn't still disenfrachize slaves. It's an excuse about how some other groups did it too. It might have been relevant response, had I claimed those other groups didn't disenfrachize slaves. But I didn't.

>It was the “0 to 1” step that was the hard one from which everything else followed.

Finally, that's an actual argument to the issue under discussion.

May I paraphrase it as "Sure, the founding fathers e.g. disenfrachized blacks etc, but their principles created the foundations for e.g. eventually abolishing slavery (that's an important 0 to 1 step)"?

And yet, tons of other places have either abolished, or practically zeroed, slavery, long before the Constitution was created. Didn't take a whole bloody war to achieve that either.

And we have no reason to believe the same modern changes wouldn't have happened without the Constitution, since parallel developments happened anyway, from Swiss cantons to the British Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, and the rest.

If anything the US in 1787 weren't ahead of the global curve. They were behind the other emerging constitutional states in accepting and even actively establishing constitutional support for slavery (like with the Three-fifths compromise and the Fugitive Slave clause). Even Japan had abolished slavery earlier!

	▲	rayiner a day ago \| parent [-]
		> it's not their influence on modern principles and their related concepts that's in question No, that’s exactly the question. You’re saying that the constitution protects non-white people less because it was written by white people. The logical follow-up is to ask what the constitution would look like if it had been written by non-white people. That would solve the problem, right? In that scenario, people would share more “in common” with the hypothetical non-white framers, right? That would mean they would be more enfranchised, right? For example, what if the framers had been Bangladeshis like me? Under your logic, I’d be more enfranchised by such a constitution, because I share more “in common” with those hypothetical Bangladeshi framers. But in reality, I’d be less franchised! Because we had no indigenous notions of democracy, civil rights, due process, free speech, etc. I’m actually better off that the framers were white British people than I would have been if the framers had been my own ancestors! Similarly, what if the constitution had been written by people from west africa? The people enslaved during the founding would have been enslaved under that constitution as well! So the original premise is false. If you’re Asian, or African, or Middle Eastern, you wouldn’t be more franchised in a counterfactual scenario where your ancestors wrote the constitution according to the precepts that prevailed in your own ancestral lands.