>The
>U.S. "Founding Fathers" created a system designed to limit popular
>sovereignty and insulate a propertied ruling class against the
>depredations of the mob - or, as Madison listed the dangers in
>Federalist No. 10 <http://www.mcs.net/~knautzr/fed/fed10.htm>: "a
>rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal
>division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project."
Wouldn't you distinguish between the Federalists like Madison and the others. I thought the war of independence had its conservatives and radicals - and that Jefferson's small-holders democracy was the latter.
Incidentally, that too-radical proposition for Attorney General Lani Guinier bases her whole argument against the Tyranny of the Majority (she means the white majority) on Madison (he meant the propertyless majority).
In message <20000424085556.A4813 at panix.com>, Gordon Fitch
<gcf at panix.com> writes
>Jim heartfield:
>> ...
>> Engels wrote (in the notebooks published as Dialectic of Nature) that
>> slavery was itself once a progressive advance over the alternative -
>> ...
>
>Progress to what?
>
>I have the same problem with this admiration for classical
>slavery and its fans Plato and Aristotle, and for the Founding
>Fathers, and so on, as I had with Hayek's efficiency. There
>is this tremendous _thing_ in the background which is the
>_unsaid_ -- the thing that gives all these people and the
>crimes they committed value which transcends the poor flesh
>they ride on and crush. One used to call it God, perhaps.
>What is it?
>
>Nietzsche, at least, was direct about it: "Man is a bridge
>over which something travels; he knows not what, but the
>bridge trembles." Good old Nietzsche.
>
Moral choices are relative to the conditions that they are made in. The level of productivity of primitive societies did not allow slave labour, so they did not take captives, just killed them. That is the context in which Engels says that ancient slavery is an advance.
You protest that people in the past don't share your opinions. You should count yourself lucky that Washington, Jefferson and the rest fought a war to protect your right to hold opinions. Otherwise my disagreement with you would be easily resolved - I could just send in the British militia to silence you.
Without US independence, Britain would have kept America to a slave- owning policy - indeed, it is more than likely that abolition in Britain would have failed. Those men from the past do not conform to your ideal, but they made it possible for your ideals to develop.
In message <20000424142606.20260.qmail at web802.mail.yahoo.com>, Curtiss Leung <bofftagstumper at yahoo.com> writes
>Why either admire or not? Why not rather respect *and
>use specific achievements* of these people, and leave
>"admiration" for those who need heroes?
Fair point. I agree. But this judgement is a bit harsh:
>
>Socrates may have attacked unquestioned acceptance of
>premises, but he was not a friend of the Athenian
>democracy.
Given the way that the Athenian democracy treated him.
And
> Plato libeled the Sophists, but stands at
>the beginning of our philsophical tradition.
The Sophists - or what we call lawyers - had it coming (sorry - it was a cheap shot all you lawyers out there). His statement of the dialectical mode of explication in the Republic, remains un-bested.
-- Jim heartfield