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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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But you can’t even see what it is with your own eyes.

The tricky part here is that the Founding Fathers, including Jefferson, did consciously acknowledge that slavery was a real moral wrong. Not only is it not the case that the Founding Fathers couldn’t see what they were doing wrong in owning slaves, but they actively stated that slavery ought to end. Here’s Jefferson’s take:

A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once concieved and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated; and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. […] The cession of that kind of property, for so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle which would not cost me in a second thought, if, in that way, a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected: and, gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might be.

This isn’t even on the same level as, say, veganism, to which analogies are often made. Sure, maybe our descendants living centuries from now would condemn us for our meat-eating, but despite the existence of present-day vegans, it cannot be stated that there is a deep moral divide at the center of America (or any other country to my knowledge) between vegans and carnivores in the same way that there was in early America between slavery-enjoyers and abolitionists.

So it would be inaccurate, in this case, to say that Jefferson couldn’t even see what he was doing wrong by owning slaves.