So. If these rich white landowners -- many of whom owned slaves -- advocated this idea, this ideal, while not actually striving to make it in their own lives, does that mean the idea or the ideal are bad?
This vexing question is, allow me to speak freely, a vexing fucking question.
Replying to @GeePawHill@mastodon.social
To be fair, though, a lot of them *did*. For every Jefferson there's a John Stuart Mill. Or even an Edmund Burke, weirdly enough (one of the core contradictions of the antislavery movement in England was that anti-slavery advocates were absolute sociopaths about the poor in their own countries, while the people who fought for *them* were aggressively indifferent about slavery at best)
Replying to @iris_meredith@mastodon.social
@iris_meredith Yeah. Europeans still do not really acknowledge their role.
As for Burke, well. I want to shit-talk him, cuz he was opposed to what I think, but I just can't, really. I mean, we're not spozed to say it, but I think he was actually a decent person.
Replying to @GeePawHill@mastodon.social
Burke was an odd one. As far as I can make out, he really did believe his shit. To the extent that he persistently voted against his own party and in the interests of his Irish electorate.
I think he had the same problem that so many thoughtful and serious people have, which is that he didn't register that most people *don't care about whether or not what they think is internally consistent*
Replying to @iris_meredith@mastodon.social
@iris_meredith Like John Adams, in a way. It simply never occurred to him that the rest of the world was not driven by principle.