Re:New York Times retracts core of podcast series ‘Caliphate’
by rayiner on Sunday December 20, 2020 @01:47PM
(#25488537)
Precisely. And you highlight the problem with judging history by current moral standards. That collapses history in on itself and it becomes impossible to even understand what happened.
The cornerstone speech illustrates how the principles embodies in the constitution weren’t just some platitude but were in fact disputed. Other parts of the cornerstone speech are especially illuminating:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.... Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.
The Confederacy attacked the founders as zealots and fanatics who didn’t accept the “scientific fact” of inequality of the races. Such thinking would persist well into the 20th century with eugenicists promoting scientific racism. Even today, the idea that everyone is created equal—even as an idea, forget about the implantation—is not universally accepted, especially outside the west.
The cornerstone speech illustrates how the principles embodies in the constitution weren’t just some platitude but were in fact disputed. Other parts of the cornerstone speech are especially illuminating:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science.... Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics.
The Confederacy attacked the founders as zealots and fanatics who didn’t accept the “scientific fact” of inequality of the races. Such thinking would persist well into the 20th century with eugenicists promoting scientific racism. Even today, the idea that everyone is created equal—even as an idea, forget about the implantation—is not universally accepted, especially outside the west.