Can you read back my comments? When did I lionize the institution of slavery? The Founders got most things right philosophically, and fell short on some of the practical implementation. Eventually the Civil War rectified this contradiction.
When did I lionize the institution of slavery?
You didn't lionise the institution of slavery, but you were lionising people that made a system that supposedly was all about individual rights but was at the same time supporting slavery.
You don't get to talk about how awesome the Founding Fathers were about the rights of individuals if you get to hand-wave away the multitudes of individuals whom they had no problems putting in chains. I mean, you even specified "absent coercion" about a society with legal industrial-scale slavery!
Edit: to be clearer, the Founding Father's philosophy quite happily allowed for slavery in practice. Perhaps you shouldn't talk of it in such reverent tones - the 'welfare state' you complain of is clearly better at being fair to all individuals, not just the blessed ones that are pre-approved.
Insofar as the statement is even remotely arguably accurate as a statement of history, it would have to be about only men.
Even then, its still more mythology than reality.
Only men? I always find it amusing when this kind of libertarian rhetoric forgets that women exist.
And if you want to talk about who is protecting the freedom of individuals, keep in mind that the US banned slavery considerably later than it's contemporaries. You talk of a 'gargantuan rights-violating welfare state' while at the same time lionising a state that was quite happy to literally enslave people. Not figuratively or rhetorically, but literally enslave people.