Should we posthumously impeach the founding fathers

[brainbomb]

We should posthumously impeach Washington, Jefferson and all the founding fathers for owning slaves.

[brainbomb]

We should impeach US Grant

[brainbomb]

We need to impeach Taft

[TrPrado]

We should impeach Richard Nixon

[Randomizer]

You can't impeach them once they left office. However let's keep impeaching Trump until he's out of office.

[orathaic]

How about actually recognising the real damage done to the 'Indian Nations' and giving them some justice, autonomy, international recognition, and respecting treaty right?

EDIT: or you know, actually ask them what they need, rather than taking my word on it.

[TrPrado]

You can't impeach them once they left office. However let's keep impeaching Trump until he's out of office.

They’re also dead and the laws some of them violated were passed ex post facto, so I think them not being in office may be the least concern with how this would work.

[brainbomb]

you can take away the 2005 national title from USC because reggie bush had a condo.

but were powerless to do whats right and impeach dead shitty presidents who did geneva convention violations

[MajorMitchell]

Whilst slavery is abhorrent it was a central factor in the development of modern Capitalism and wealth creation by European nations and the USA and individuals and was a legal activity at the time that Jefferson and others engaged in owning and trading slaves.
Perhaps a more relevant conversation would be about modern slavery that as well as discussing unlawful slavery also discusses what I call "economic slavery" which is the exploitation​ of workers in for example the "E~bit" economy and the way Capitalism distributes created wealth.

[MajorMitchell]

For example, it could be argued that the USA's military forces benefit from economic slavery. By having a large number of people and families living in poverty, a massive underclass of disadvantaged families there is a large number of young people who are effectively forced to join the US Military Services because it's the only choice to gain trade/professional training, medical benefits and escape poverty and unemployment.

[Octavious]

Whilst slavery is abhorrent it was a central factor in the development of modern Capitalism and wealth creation by European nations and the USA and individuals and was a legal activity at the time that Jefferson and others engaged in owning and trading slaves.

Poppycock. Slavery may have been permitted in the colonies, but it had been abolished in England by virtue of its clear moral repugnancy since shortly after the Norman invasion. To quote from William of Malmesbury on the slave trade he discovered in Bristol that had managed to limp on into the 1100s:

"They would purchase people from all over England and sell them off to Ireland in the hope of profit; and put up for sale maidservants after toying with them in bed and making them pregnant. You would have groaned to see the files of the wretches of people roped together, young people of both sexes, whose youth and beauty would have aroused the pity of barbarians, being put up for sale every day."

Slavery continued to be viewed as an abhorrent evil throughout the last thousand years. The popular British patriotic song, as penned in the mid 1700s, sings:

"The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

The excuse that it was a different time with different standards simply doesn't wash. It's evil now, it was evil then, and it was evil countless of generations before.

[Randomizer]

Slavery still persists in modern times albeit under different names. In the US you have the knowing hiring of illegal aliens where they can't protest illegal wage conditions without losing their jobs and being deported. So they can be forced to work longer hours at lower wages.

For instance Trump companies hiring Polish steel workers, maids at Trump resorts, vineyard workers who were fired after harvesting season, and Trump hunting lodges.

[flash2015]

Whilst slavery is abhorrent it was a central factor in the development of modern Capitalism and wealth creation by European nations and the USA and individuals and was a legal activity at the time that Jefferson and others engaged in owning and trading slaves.

Poppycock. Slavery may have been permitted in the colonies, but it had been abolished in England by virtue of its clear moral repugnancy since shortly after the Norman invasion. To quote from William of Malmesbury on the slave trade he discovered in Bristol that had managed to limp on into the 1100s:

"They would purchase people from all over England and sell them off to Ireland in the hope of profit; and put up for sale maidservants after toying with them in bed and making them pregnant. You would have groaned to see the files of the wretches of people roped together, young people of both sexes, whose youth and beauty would have aroused the pity of barbarians, being put up for sale every day."

Slavery continued to be viewed as an abhorrent evil throughout the last thousand years. The popular British patriotic song, as penned in the mid 1700s, sings:

"The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

The excuse that it was a different time with different standards simply doesn't wash. It's evil now, it was evil then, and it was evil countless of generations before.

1100s? Perhaps English to English slavery was abolished but foreigners were fair game. The UK was one of the biggest promoters of slavery worldwide until the late 18th century. Here are a few ads from British newspapers about runaway slaves in the 18th century (the article notes that an abolitionist in 1768 estimated there were 20K black slaves in London alone):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/ret ... e-genteel/

Slavery was not really abolished in the empire until the 19th century with the following two acts but even after this slavery was still allowed in British India:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_A ... n_Act_1833

[MajorMitchell]

Dear Octavious, the Portuguese still used slaves in South America in the 1750s/1760s, I refer you to the excellent biography of the first Governor if NSW, Arthur Philip, Soldier Sailor Spy & something else(Diplomat?) and the influence his experiences witnessing slavery when he was in service of the Portuguese Navy in South America had on his attitudes when he was given command of the First Fleet sent to colonise Australia.
Who laboured on the plantations owned by God fearing Englishmen and other Europeans in the West Indies and American colonies in the 16th, 17th &18th centuries, well paid workers or slaves? What were Wilberforce and other emancipists fighting against in the nineteenth century ? Laws against slavery are only effective if enforced and the Royal Navy didn't start enforcing laws against slavery until the nineteenth century. There's also the famous test case in English law decided by England's senior judge (Mansfield I think) that confirmed that a freed slave who resided in England could not be subjected to renewed slavery, and that case was the first where the powerful commercial interests of English slave owners were denied and a notable precedent set, and that case occurred centuries after 1100AD.
English serfs were only effectively freed by the severe labour shortage caused by plague not by a sudden desire to embrace moral righteousness by middle age English aristocrats and large landowners.

European nations greatly increased their wealth in the way the Spanish looted Mexican silver and South American gold, and then from the plantations worked by slaves in their colonies.
To suggest that the Norman/Angevin rulers of England genuinely believed in the common law rights of peasants is risible nonsense.
Indeed there is quite a deal of revisionism regarding Magna Carta imho in that there's this rubbish that Magna Carta is concerned about the rights of the ordinary citizen, the rebellious Barons really only cared about the legal rights of themselves vis a vis the monarch.
John Lennon famously sang that "women are the niggers of the world" & I note for your attention Octavious that the adult female half of England's population were denied voting rights until after WW1. If half the adult population is denied voting rights then they are effectively slaves of some form.
Want to have a discussion about female sex slaves in London during the Georgian period and estimate the scale of prostitution in England of those times as a proportion of the total economy or it's annual turnover in today's currency or shall we ignore that and waffle on about the virtues of Regency furniture ?
That patriotic songs you refer to is a great example of the hypocrisy of those times and serves a purpose in propaganda which Goebbels would have admired​. It reassures proper English Christian White men that they shall not be slaves and ignores the inconvenient truth that Englishmen singing it in the 1700s overwhelmingly believed that "nig~nogs and orientals" were well suited to servitude and females and their property both became upon marriage, the property of the husband..

Readers please note that my purpose in using offensive descriptive terminology is not because I endorse the inherently racist or sexist nature of such words, but because the existence and historical usage of such words is dramatic evidence of our collective racist and sexist cultural history

[MajorMitchell]

And Octavious, you ignored the clear distinction I made between what is moral(or immoral) and what was legally allowed. I clearly described slavery as abhorrent, but made the point that Jefferson and colleagues were not acting unlawfully when they owned and traded slaves. Tis always a mistake to confuse morality and legality, or the immoral with the unlawful, as it is to assume that what is moral is always lawful & what is immoral is always unlawful.

[orathaic]

Whilst slavery is abhorrent it was a central factor in the development of modern Capitalism and wealth creation by European nations and the USA and individuals and was a legal activity at the time that Jefferson and others engaged in owning and trading slaves.

Poppycock. Slavery may have been permitted in the colonies, but it had been abolished in England by virtue of its clear moral repugnancy since shortly after the Norman invasion. To quote from William of Malmesbury on the slave trade he discovered in Bristol that had managed to limp on into the 1100s:

"They would purchase people from all over England and sell them off to Ireland in the hope of profit; and put up for sale maidservants after toying with them in bed and making them pregnant. You would have groaned to see the files of the wretches of people roped together, young people of both sexes, whose youth and beauty would have aroused the pity of barbarians, being put up for sale every day."

Slavery continued to be viewed as an abhorrent evil throughout the last thousand years. The popular British patriotic song, as penned in the mid 1700s, sings:

"The nations, not so blest as thee,
Must, in their turns, to tyrants fall;
While thou shalt flourish great and free,
The dread and envy of them all.
"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves:
"Britons never will be slaves."

The excuse that it was a different time with different standards simply doesn't wash. It's evil now, it was evil then, and it was evil countless of generations before.

You seem to be entirely ignorant of the racism used to justify slavery, how colonies used slave labour (eg: Haiti) to extract value and send it back to Europe. Capitalism as a successful economic system depends on the availability of capital, which is easier to maintain when you extract it from a colony(Imperialism and Capitalism are a comfortable fit); because if you are extracting it at home directly from a working/agricultural class you tend to end up with civil conflicts (which damage the accumulated capital; eg Russian revolution, or the swing riots in England - because it there is a range of civil conflicts from minor rioting to full on revolution).

That said, a lot of British Imperialism was driven by Capitalists. Ie the owners of large amounts of capital who wanted new markets to invest in. They had technological advantages (railways), but there came a time when they had already built them all over the UK, and so they needed new territories to spread out to.

Of course these other territories didn't have the money to invest, so it only made sense to lend them the money, build the railways, and then send in Crown troops to force them to repay their debts. Thus British policy served the interests of a small number of capitalists. And whether Slavery itself was being practiced is irrelevant, the extraction of wealth by force is the problem. Extraction of labour by force as slavery is a subset of the methods used by these 'great champions of industry', over the centuries.

[Octavious]

You seem to be entirely ignorant of the racism used to justify slavery, how colonies used slave labour (eg: Haiti) to extract value and send it back to Europe

Curious what makes you think so?

[Octavious]

And Octavious, you ignored the clear distinction I made between what is moral(or immoral) and what was legally allowed. I clearly described slavery as abhorrent, but made the point that Jefferson and colleagues were not acting unlawfully when they owned and traded slaves. Tis always a mistake to confuse morality and legality, or the immoral with the unlawful, as it is to assume that what is moral is always lawful & what is immoral is always unlawful.

I didn't ignore it, Major, but I question the significance. Not acting unlawfully when you are in a position to write the law is not a particularly impressive feat. My point is that slavery was never considered right or acceptable. It was as obviously wrong then as it is now. That it was legal? Who gives a damn?

[orathaic]

@Mitchel, I'm not sure i agree with all of what you said. But I do agree with the majority. So if it sounds like I am picking nits, I believe we are largely in agreement in our objection to Octavious' revisionist version of English history.

How and ever to nitpick; to say English women were slaves because they couldn't vote does some disservice to slavery; especially when you then go on to talk about sex workers without elaborating... Wife's were essentially property of their husbands (and daughters of their fathers) without a right to vote or hold property.

Sex workers, on the other hand, were often renting their bodies rather than being owned outright. Even where this was a worse situation to be in.

Generational (chattel) slavery as practiced in colonial empires (where your body was owned, your right to have a family was controlled, and any children you would have were also property of your owner) was very different from either of these (though racists often talk about 'irish slavery', indentured service is likewise very different from chattel slavery) was much worse. Though I do concede women were treated like slaves; marital rape was only overturned in the UK in 1991. Basically, it appears married women lost their bodily autonomy and became property of their husbands, and thus could not refuse to have sex with him... This is shockingly late to overturn.

[orathaic]

Oct, taking your last two posts together. Do you think that the English were immune from the racism which justified hundreds of years of slavery?