Was the USA founded on a DOUBLE STANDARD?!?!? SLAVE OWNERS wanted to be FREE??????

Question

watch this video...... talks about how the USA was founded.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Rlqjxst6xU&feature=related

Don't you think that it was a BIG double standard that a group of white slave owners wanted to be free from the white english people?????

Answer 1

Glenn is correct, and in more was than just referring to Samuel Johnson.  Recognition of the inconsistency was widespread, and even extended to slave owners themselves.  Jefferson, often vilified over the issue of slavery, wanted to place blame of George III in the Declaration for continued demands to keep the slave trade open.  Jefferson sought at several points in his life to find a workable solution to the slavery issue, unfortunately and belatedly declaring (in response to the Missouri Compromise of 1820) that the issue was as if we held a wolf by the ears, having taken hold neither able to hold on in perpetuity nor let go immediately; faced with the choice of either imminent or ultimate destruction.  Jefferson also "trembled" for his country upon reflecting that God was just, and that the new nation would ultimately be judged for the slavery issue.

That being said, the United States was founded on the principles of liberty:  freedom from tyrannical rule, freedom from unjust taxation, and freedom to determine individually and as a nation the paths that we lead and the direction we take as a government.

While the irony persists, consider this:  Despite significant numbers of colonists and early Americans opposed to continued slavery (and to a lesser extent inequality) if the early abolitionists had forced their hand the "slave owners" you refer to would have been left less free, and their contined ownership of slaves would have been directed by a foreign monarch.

Whatever the inconsistencies at the time, judged from our modern comforts, in the absence of their achievements there would have been no civil rights, no feminists movement, and no modern notions of civil rights.  They gave us the principles, but left us with the tasks incomplete; whether from principled weaknesses, lack of fortitude, or most likely the understandably but nonetheless repugnant lack of political will, they achieved the equality they could and formulated a system that would evolve to guarantee liberty to all.

So, yes to your question, but remember we evaluate our founders as other humans:  flawed and fallible.  Yet, despite their weaknesses and contradictions, they formed a nearly perfect system of government that has endured.  So, direct your anger to the failed policies, the failure of will, and the shortcomings of the founders.  But so too we must all direct our gratitude for their achievements, and the work they left for us to do.  As historian Joseph Ellis is quick to note, their fallibilities make them all the more remarkable, for even with all their weaknesses, they formulated nation against what Franklin called "longer odds than a more just god would have allowed" and drafted the Constitution that still serves us so well with only a handful of necessary amendments.

Answer 2

Life is nothing but double standards and even more hypocrisy now than at any other time, we have politicians pretending to care about those people in the country who are struggling financially while they themselves rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign contributions tax free yet if someone makes a measly $9 an hour they must pay tax.

Answer 3

There was also a double standard regarding North versus South.  The slave traders were originally Dutch, Spanish, and English, but eventually, they were Yankees and Knickerbockers, like the Roosevelt. They are the ones that sold the slaves to the Southern planters.  James Roosevelt was on O'Reilly's a few years back and acknowledged what people in the South have always known, that FDR's grandfather was a slave trader.

People have read that the South wanted to be paid to free their slaves but the last piece of legislation that was proposed and looked like it was going to pass is that the Southern Planter would receive financial consideration from the Yankee and Knickerbocker families whose wealth had been derived from the slave trade.  The legislation failed as there were some who were in the pockets of those families.

It might have averted the Civil War.

In my home town we had a man to come here to manage an insurance agency about 30 years ago who was very smug about the Southern history of slavery.    He was always making snotty remarks.  Well, in the past few years he has found out and also others have found out that his Mayflower ancestors of whom he was so proud were involved in the slave trade.  Of course, he has had to take it on the chin.  He had behaved like Southerners would call a trashy damyankee.  I understand I had some Spanish ancestors that were involved but I wouldn't think of acting smug toward anyone because of the sins of their ancestors.  There probably aren't any nations or societies that don't have hypocrisy in their past.  Just because you don't know of any skeletons in your closet doesn't mean there aren't.

Slavery was an ugly blight on our country, but not just on the United States.  

Now, I want to see if this will be reported because of my an expression I used in the last paragraph.  There was another person who posted a diatribe against Italians and Yahoo has let it stand. My expression was about an individual man, not entire group of people.  This is a chance to see if Yahoo has a double standard.

Answer 4

"You give us a color, we'll wipe it out!"

That is classic...

Mr. Carlin had it completely right about the American system from top to bottom on many levels.  Unfortunately, even the part where ordinary Americans are not capable of logical reasoning, leading them to not understand what he is saying.

There is a speech by Frederick Douglas that says it best, I think you will find much truth in it:

http://www.libertynet.org/edcivic/freddo...

The double standard is simply that as long as it is profitable for oneself it is deemed ok and even necessary but if the roles are reversed than so does ones opinions on it.  

One mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.  Our nation has been built on the largest hypocricies, hypocricies we do not shy away from but blatantly ignore.  It is an audacious one by the simple fact that we still believe ourselves to be so in the right.

Even in WW2, a German POW could watch a movie in the same room as his American captor but the colored American soldier could not.  And we fought the n**i's for their racist ways?  Hypocrisy...

Answer 5

Basically. I learned this bit of irony in my African-American history class.

Answer 6

You're asking the same question that Samuel Johnson posed in 1775 in a criticism of colonial grievances - 'How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of negroes?'

Johnson, an opponent of slavery, was unusual in raising this an an issue at the time. The British Government was certainly not in a position to make much of it. Slavery and the slave trade were still legal in the British Empire (though not in Britain itself as it would turn out). The West Indies provided a hugely lucrative trade which generated much of Britain's (and France's) wealth, and slavery was an integral part of this.

Answer 7

You misunderstand the context; the white people you speak of who wanted to be "free from the Crown" were raised in a world where they viewed black people as property, just as they viewed dogs & horses they owned as property; to think this was a "double standard" is to ignore the fact that (some of) those people matured to the point where they realized that their "slaves" were just like them, and emancipation inevitably followed.

Answer 8

yes it is a huge double standard but as horrible as it was, slaves were not considered people back then.

anyone who was not white was automatically inferior

Answer 9

Our country was founded on racism... Of course it was founded on a double standard.

Answer 10

No, not a "double Standard".  They saw the races as different.  You can't have a "double standard" if you are speaking about "apples and oranges".  Now, if you  are asking if it was WRONG.... then Yes, it was.

As for your question, this has been asked by almost every elementary student since the time BEFORE the Civil War.  You can see it in the written arguments in diaries of that time.  You should have really paid more attention in school and you wouldn't be bringing up these juvenile complaints just trying to bash this country.  There is still slavery in the world today... but WE got rid of it over 150 years ago.   Why don't you bash some of the countries that still have slavery?   OH!.. that's right... those countries don't like the U.S. either!  Gee, That would be like bashing your friends and allies wouldn't it?