[detbuch]

QUOTE=spence;1033566][*]Slavery came out of left field and surprised the process built by slave owning Founders.

There's this peculiar notion, or more to the point, an ignorant agenda driven bromide, that because some of the founders owned slaves they couldn't actually believe in individual freedom, or didn't have a right to speak of it, or were hypocrites, or weren't qualified to write a constitution based on it. I suppose by the same idiotic reasoning slaves could also not speak of freedom or believe in it. How does a slave become not a slave? How does a slave owner become not a slave owner?

If you're born into a system and live it through most of your adult life, a system accepted by the society you live in, that was inherited by that society and those before it, and was considered, protected, and instituted as the way of life, an institution that was practiced throughout the world for ages, do you just wake up one morning, get brain-zapped with an idea that the slavery, the ties with England, the separate colonies--the whole business--was all wrong. And POOF with a snap of your fingers all would change and become somehow better?

In your dreams, perhaps. But it didn't change because of a dream. It changed because of circumstance. And because of dissatisfaction, not with the way of life you were taught to live, or your association with the world's greatest power, or with the security and opportunity that association provided to you and your forbears, but because that association was beginning to change in a fundamental way. A way that promised to reduce the opportunities for freedom and wealth that it once allowed. A way that promised to reduce you more toward the state of a slave than a free man.

Rather than some idealistic dream of freedom, it was a threat to the actual freedoms you possessed that required a change in the old relation. And that first required a parting of ways, which could only be done violently, and then a construction of a new order. And that construction required a foundation, principles, a new governance which would assure the maintenance and continued fruition of the freedom you coveted.

Though there were calls to ideals of freedom from those like Paine which inspired the Revolution, it was in those moments, and hours and weeks and months of debate afterwards about why you had done this and how you would secure and perpetuate it that the principles of national government were ordained. Those principles were a result of change as much, or more, than the path to it. And the Founders were caught between what they created with its motivating creed of equality and the reality of their existing societal norms.

The world and society didn't instantly change after the Revolution. It was relatively the same but with a new order, and a new form of government. But the principles which were the foundation of this new society were much higher minded than some of its actual practices, including slavery. And the resistance of some to changing that was a problem. And some of the Founders who had hammered out the new government and had arrived at and agreed to its principles but still retained slaves from the previous society knew that was counter to the principle of freedom and so faced an internal dilemma.

Jefferson, who is proclaimed an egregious example of hypocrisy had spoken against slavery even before the Constitution was written. And did so afterwards. He made dire warnings and predictions about the future as a result of slavery. Washington also is a noted "hypocrite." But he actually, in his will, freed his slaves upon his or his wife's death. So why didn't they immediately free their slaves. I suppose the most obvious and immediate reason is they lived in a slave state. There would be obvious problems for the freed slaves for those and many other reasons. That's not to say they were right. They were also, as were most whites of the time, racist in their view of the ability of blacks to thrive on their own. And there was no doubt fear of freed blacks, especially if they didn't have the means to make decent lives.

It was not as simple as a snap of the finger. They knew it was wrong. They made provisions such as the prohibition of slave importation after 1808, and prohibition of slavery into the Northwest Territory, and so on, with the intention that the institution would die out.

But the principle that all men are created equal was a declaration not only to England to be applied to the rebelling colonists, it was a message to the world and to all its people that they had the same rights for which the Revolution was fought. And that ideal was true and worthy for the struggle to obtain it, and because it was true it should be evident to kings and even to slave holders.

The Founders arrived at that truth, and some were mired in a way of life that was not so easily nor instantly divested.

Progressive jurisprudence isn't an open book, like I said, everything has to be evaluated on its merit. Just because you can change doesn't mean you must change. With the inverse conservatives would never be able to evolve either...

-spence[/QUOTE]

You're spot on. Progressive jurisprudence is no book at all. It evaluates everything on whatever merit progressive judges feel applies according to their personal views of the moment. Progressive jurisprudence is not bound by books or laws. They evaluate more by trends of perceived social justice which may change from time to time, even quite often. The trends can switch instantly, in midstream of an election cycle--one day the prevailing trend of progressives even like Obama can be that marriage is between a man and a woman, the next day that becomes passé and tossed into the trash bin of history. What was good ten years ago . . . well . . . that may not work today. That was a long time ago. History marches on. But what is important in progressive ideology, backed by progressive jurisprudence, is that just plain regular folks, sort of the drones, are not allowed on their own to evaluate everything on its merit. Only progressive ideology filtered through progressive jurisprudence is allowed that privilege in order, of course, to create that perfect union of like minds--stepping in unison.

And, of course, because you are not expected to change or to evaluate everything on its merit on your own (which is the purview of progressive ideology and jurisprudence) you will, MUST, change in accordance with ad hoc progressive jurisprudence. In this way, we, conservatives, liberals, progressives, atheists, Muslims, all the various genders, will all evolve together--in the same way. Which eliminates that old, natural way of evolution which happened with the friction of differing or opposing ideas or elements intermingling--in sometimes uncomfortable overly bumptious ways--and brings us all together harmoniously, peacefully into a world that no longer even requires evolution . . . or . . . will no longer be able to evolve.