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Why is freedom a right?; Philosophically not historically
Topic Started: Jan 16 2008, 01:54 PM (443 Views)
Hoss
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Don't make me use my bare hands on you.
somerled
Jan 19 2008, 09:48 PM
RTW
Jan 17 2008, 02:18 PM
Minuet
Jan 16 2008, 05:35 PM
If the Declaration of Independance granted those rights then why did slavery exist in the United States long after the Declaration was signed.

I submit that despite the wording freedom wasn't really so self-evident.

Try to think about this from an 18th century perspective. Slavery was not unique to the United States. The United States did not invent slavery. Slavery at the scale it occured would have been impossible without the help of the Africans who were selling their rivals into slavery.

Why did the USA allow slavery? Slavery was a deal breaker.

Without slavery there wouldn't have been a United States. Without the United States slavery may never have been abolished in the entire region now considered the United States.

The Founding Fathers had foresight. They knew if they created the union there was a chance they could fix it later. If there was no union then that chance was greatly reduced.

Maybe you should watch AMAZING GRACE , which is a dramatisation of William Wilberforce's campaign in the early 1700s to abolish slavery throughout the British Empire.
I watched this last night on DVD , I had already heard of him (one of Pitts contemparies) before , a man ahead of his time , or perhaps the USA was behind the times.

Over 130 years before the USA abolished slavery. So why do slavery persist in the USA so much longer ?

Because your high and mighty British were making a killing off the African slave trade long after they abolished it on their home soil as they had the slave market cornered. But, hey, at least we got their arrogant preachiness too. Perhaps that is what is meant by ahead of the times, going from making money off of slave labor to focusing on making a killing off of the capturing and selling of slaves.

I might add that the USA is free of an institutionalized discrimination system based upon family of birth. How about you guys? Perhaps we are just ahead of the times.
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