I gather from your phrase, "Let me get this straight" that you didn't like my interpretation of what Jefferson may or may not have meant. — Bitter Crank

Dear Mr Crank,

No, I was just going to to explain to you that if it were you personally who was affirming the claim that "All men are created equal" and the particular dimension/principle of equality to which you were alluding was MORAL equality ( I assumed this might be the case from your use of the phrase "equal before God" ) then your position is totally untenable; and I would be happy to tell you why this is the case.

However, I take it there is now no real necessity for me to proceed, given the equivocal nature of the content in your recent response re the issue? ( i.e. that you MIGHT - not DO -, etc. think all men are created morally equal in terms of properties like virtue/worth/dignity).

I will therefore leave you in peace to ponder the question further for yourself if it is of particular interest/importance to you.

Regards

Dachshund

Did Jefferson have doubts about the morality of slavery? Yes: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever." — Bitter Crank

Dear Mr Crank,

No enough doubts, apparently, for him to remain a slave owner for many years after 1776; and according a number of historical accounts, one who was never a particularly kind master. He also sold quite a number of his own slaves, I read, for the express purpose of funding purchases of many luxury items ( expensives wines and other fine goods, etc) for himself at Monticello. Interesting as well., that when TJ was President in 1802, and purchased Louisiana from Napoleon, who sold the land very cheaply, Jefferson, although he had the power to stop it, allowed the slave trade to continue and flourish in the new American-owned territory. Had he acted to outlaw slavery in the state of Louisiana ( which occupied a large chunk the South at the time ) after he bought the land from the French, many believe the American Civil War could have been prevented. So basically, Thomas Jefferson was, it seems to me, just an A-Grade hypocrite and liar; a man who made a lot of filthy lucre for himself and his cronies through protecting the slave trade in the US over many years. That's something, IMO, they should be teaching kids in US elementary school history lessons about the author of their great "American Creed".


Regards


Dachshund

[quote="Bitter Crank;153874"

]All men (humans) are equal before God as products of God's creative power. There is nothing in the concept of egalitarian creation that conflicts with men (humans) occupying all sorts of different stations in life, from King of England on down to the lowliest field slave.[/quote]


Dear Mr Crank,

Let me get this straight...Am I correct in thinking you are saying, in essence, that all human beings have equal MORAL status? Am I right in thinking that when you declare "All men (humans) are equal before God as products of God's creative power", you are claiming that all human beings thereby possess the same fundamental rights; and the comparable interests of each person should count the same in any calculations that determine social policy, for example? And this means, among other things, that no differences that existbetween human beings, be it in skin colour, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, cognitive capacity, should negate their fundamental EQUAL (identical) worth, value and dignity?

Regards

Dachshund

No, I am just an average Joe - nothing special, no special talents or skills really. Politically, I am an Edmund Burke - type conservative - (maybe even a little to the right of old Edmund actually, in that I am sympathetic to Traditionalism).

Dear Mr Clark,

I disagree entirely.

The principle of hierarchy, as opposed to equality , has existed as long as civilisation itself. Every major domain of human life activity: the family, religion, education, labour, politics and government, interpersonal relationships has traditionally been structured hierarchically. Almost all successful societies, have, for example, been characterised by patriarchy and parental authority.

I believe it is fair to say that hierarchy ( the existence of which presupposes authority) is, in fact intrinsic to human existence ( i.e. humanbeing, as such). The human mode of being is conspicuously shot through entirely with hierarchy...

In my view it is important here to appreciate that the true opposite of equality is not inequality, but quality.. Culture, for instance is ordered intellectual life; it is a maturing and self-perfecting form which calls for an ever higher grade of personality. Human society, as I say, exists on the basis of quality rather than equality of men... strong natures and weak natures, temperaments and personalities born to lead or not to lead, the creative and the talentless, the honourable and the ignoble, the forthright and the passive, the conscientious and industrious and the lazy and idle, the ambitious and the amotivated.

It is precisely through the creation of ordered, organic hierarchies of interdependent higher and lower levels of authority that human( and animal) societies have -over the countless millenia - efficiently addressed and effectively managed the myriad natural differences in the human substance. But it is essential to bear in mind the process of incremental adjustments that are necessary to achieve this end require 100s and sometimes 1000s of years to hone and refine.

This is precisely why the Enlightenment notions of egalitarian utopism espoused by French thinkers like Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu in the 18th century proved such a disaster for humanity when they were ultimately used to ground the kind of political ideology that inspired the Jacobin communist insurrection in Paris that began with the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The dreadful "reign of terror" and senseless blood-letting that followed in the years of 1793 and 1794 were without precedent in the modern era.

I think the horrors of the French revolution served well to demonstrate what happens when centuries of carefully cultivated traditional modes of natural hierarchy and authority are suddenly, recklessly and violently destroyed and replaced with an unnatural ,egalitarian, utopist re-ordering of society.

But the lesson was not learned... In the 20th century, Marxist egalitarian ideology gave rise to a series of monstrous totalitarian regimes, for example: dialectical materialism in the former Soviet Union under Stalin, Mao Zedong's equalitarian "Cultural Revolution" in Red China, Pol Pot's primitive attempt to establish a radical, agrarian communist utopia in Cambodia in the 1970, etc; that saw literally 100s of millions of human beings ruthlessly slaughtered by their own governments.

Indeed, the Cold War arms race between the West and Communism came to threaten the very existence of humanity itself. Who could ever forget how the entire world was transfixed in terror by the surreal nightmare of impending apocalypse, as the insane, brinkmanship of total thermonuclear global annihilation played out between Jack Kennedy and his Whitehouse advisors in the US and their Soviet adversaries in Nikita Krushchev's Kremlin at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the October of 1962?

These are some of reasons I am so opposed to socialist/communist political ideologies founded on what I would argue is the demonstrably false egalitarian delusion that "all men are created equal". They are not, and if one tries toforce them to be - disaster, devastation, misery and suffering are always the inevitable consequences.

Regards

Dachshund

That was not how the ancients, Aristotle, for example, justified slavery in classical antiquity. For Aristotle, slaves were very much men (i.e. human beings,homo sapiens) /though they were human beings who possessed a material deficiency of reason ( cognitive capacity) relative to the norm.This being the case they were only fit for basic types of labour and needed , as well, to be quite strictly supervised lest they stray "off task" or engage themselves in foolish, wayward or purposeless , etc; behaviours.

Regards

Dachshund

What did more to inflame revolutionary sentiment among the people after the war against the British began in 1775, was the Englishman Tom Paine's widely read political pamphlet of 1776, "Common Sense". Tom Pain was an egalitarian utopist par excellence - a socialist through and through, and the egalitarian content of "Common SEnse" was very sincere and passionately felt, I believe. Also, I am sure that Tom Paine and his "Common Sense" were tremendous influences on Jefferson at the time (1776) and, the real "author" of the preamble to the American Declaration of Independence was, in fact, Tom Paine ?

Thomas Jefferson owned around 200 negro slaves at the time he signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, so therefore , it seems to me he knew full well he was lying when he wrote the egalitarian sentiments that appear in the preamble?

Regards

Dachshund

There are lots of other passages in Nietzsche's work critical of women. He seems to have had a low opinion of them in general for whatever reason/s. So did Schopenhauer and Kant. Kant thought that most women were innately deficient, in term of their capacity for rational thought and therefore essentially morally deficient in consequence. BTW, If you read Schopenhauer's essay, "On Women" , you will find that he is even more caustically misogynistic than Nietzsche,

Regards

Dachshund.