The Real First Nations

[cybercoma]

Adams didn't...that's why I said "six of the seven."

You need to be careful not to use modern values to judge the past. They weren't bad people simply because they held slaves.

[bleeding heart]

You need to be careful not to use modern values to judge the past. They weren't bad people simply because they held slaves.

I agree (though I would add that anti-slavery moral sentiment was alive and flourishing in their times, even in Washington's; so it's not as if they were doing something uncontroversial).

At any rate, it's irrelevant, as I wasn't making an anachronistic judgement; I was responding directly to this:

I agree with you, Hungarians were never OFFICIALLY slaves. But just go ahead and ask anyone who managed to escape the Soviet yoke if they would ever consider themselves slaves, under Stalin.

I don't know about you, but Jefferson, Adams, Washington, Madison, Monroe,Jackson and van Buren sounds a heck of a lot friendlier than Lenin and Stalin.

Since he brought up slavery, and then performed the conventional piety of implying the inherent moral magnificence of the American Founders....I thought it an apt response.

Edited April 17, 2012 by bleeding heart

[jbg]

And what smallpox didn't get, the Seventh Cavalry tried to. It's amazing how many people seem unaware of the fact that the genocide of the American aboriginal population was a matter of policy based on the white supremacist beliefs of the day.

I'm not saying the policies weren't horrific. I'm saying that General Smallpox did more damage than the Seventh Cavalry.