Trumpish rhetoric:
Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee. So this week it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?
I thought that I have moved past my capacity to be shocked, but I was listening to a recent episode of Uncivil (Chenjarai Koumanyika’s podcast) and some of the things they recounted completely blew me away. If you think you’d rather listen to it, which I recommend, the link is: [here] [transcript] From here on, I’ll trade freely in spoilers.
“I cannot tell a lie, a Frenchman talked me into chopping down that cherry tree.”
Here’s a summary: Washington was a cheating, lying, slaving, piece of shit. He deserves no statues, no coins, and ought to be lumped in history alongside other great losers like Robert E. Lee and Hitler. Yes, I went there. Hitler tried to wipe out an entire tribe of humans because of his racism; Washington was instrumental in dooming generations numbering millions, to a living labor-camp that their descendants still struggle to escape from, today. I thought he was just another oligarchic hypocrite like Jefferson, but he was the front-man for the whole enterprise.
Elsewhere, I’ve mentioned how the colonists’ cries that their “freedoms” were under attack did not ring true with me: “what freedoms?” Their “freedom” to own people; that was the one place (other than taxes) where the colonies felt that changes to English common law were impacting their behavior. [stderr] Somerset V Stuart removed the legal basis for slave-ownership, leaving the colonists with a few years of confusion before they revolted in order to preserve their oligarchs’ wealth and the tobacco and cotton industries. That’s the macro picture. The micro-picture is almost more devastating, and that’s what Uncivil gets into. It’s an interview with author Erica Dunbar, who researched and wrote the history of a young enslaved woman who ran away, and what happened to her. [wc] Never Caught is the story of Ona Judge, who was one of many runaway slaves; the people who thought they owned her were George and Martha Washington.
When the US was founded, abolition was a hot part of the political agenda. Some parts of the country, such as Philadelphia – the capital – had laws prohibiting slavery. If someone moved the Philadelphia, their slaves were free after 90 days. For Washington, this would have meant freeing his slaves once he took over as president and took up residence there. But, in a feat of remarkable sleaziness, Washington hit upon the dodge of rotating his slaves between Mt Vernon, in Virginia, and his residence in Philadelphia – every 75 days. He was aware that the “optics are bad” with that maneuver so he was careful to keep that secret. When Ona Judge ran away, Washington didn’t want word of his dodge to leak out, so he floated the lie that Ona had been seduced away by a frenchman.
Then, Washington gets creepy. He takes out an ad in the newspaper offering a substantial reward. A chance encounter with a member of Washington’s family gives up the fact that Ona is hiding in Portsmouth, so Washington drops a request to the secretary of the treasury, asking him to find someone who can capture and return his property. That’s so far ahead of “pulling strings” that it’s off the chart – the President of the United States is using the government itself to help him catch one runaway. Ona manages to fool the slave-catcher who is sent after her (who gets confused by the story about the nonexistent frenchman) and takes it on the lam, again. Washington attempts to negotiate with her, not offering her her freedom but promising not to be particularly cruel to the members of her family that are still under his control. In terms of creepiness, Washington trumps Trump. Remember, this is the president of the united states, threatening a 20-something woman who had nobody in the world defending her. The guy who is threatening her is the commander of the armed forces and he’s called upon the secretary of the treasury in an official capacity to help get his 20-something victim run to ground. He was also one of the wealthiest land-holders in the country; Ona was a rounding-error on his books – he was simply a mean, vindictive bastard, typifying the absolute worst of the slave-owner culture he was a part of.
The end of Ona’s story is a mix of complications. She remains free and is never caught; she finds a man she’s happy with, and has children, but the man dies young. Then, George Washington does everyone a favor and dies. Unfortunately, Washington was a hypocritical asshole even beyond the grave: he had apparently planned to free his slaves upon his death, but instead he willed them over to Martha, that they only be freed on her death. If this was a Coen Brothers movie, that would be the end of Martha, too, but 120+ slaves (including Ona) were trapped in the Washington’s hell, inter-generationally. Ona’s children, who were born free, still had a claim on them from the Washington estate because of her attempt to escape. When Washington’s granddaughter married Robert E. Lee (yes, that Robert E. Lee) the claim on Ona’s children passed to their family.
Let me answer Trump’s rhetorical question: yes, tear down the statues of Washington, too. He created the American south. He laid the fuse for the civil war, and helped light it; he was greedy, heartless, and vindictive. Oh, and he could tell a lie: there never was a “frenchman” – Ona ran away because she was tired of having someone think they owned her. If there’s anyone in this story who deserves a statue, it’s the 20-something woman who flouted the most powerful man in the country because she had right on her side.
You may have noticed that I have decided to use words like “shit”, “fuck”, and “asshole” more often. There’s a reason for that: I want to avoid ableist slurs, and those are pretty good slurs (though they are a bit abstract). I’m not going to whine about how our dialectics have been dragged into the gutter; they always were in the gutter, all that stuff about “bad words” is just pretense. I look at George Washington and Donald Trump and all I can think is that “it’s time to call an asshole ‘asshole'”
So, the law must have been written so that it meant only the slaves that occupied the Philadelphia residence with him, otherwise all of his slaves no matter where they were would have been freed 90 days after he took up residence there. Is that a correct assessment? If so, that seems like the law was written with that huge loophole just so the rich could take advantage of it.
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BTW, Ona sounds like a pretty savvy woman.
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Also, 45 is just afraid that no one will honor him with statues and memorials for being the greatest POTUS (Prince of Turds, Unrivaled Shithead) ever.
The transcript you linked to seems to have been automated.
This transcript was either done by hand, or is a correction of an automated one.
eg, the first transcript (penultimate para)
The second transcript, same section:
Final sentence, 1st transcript: “I’m ginger I Kamenica”
Final sentence, 2nd transcript: “I’m Chenjerai Kumanyika.”
I think for that alone, the 2nd one should be linked to.
So one of the reasons for the war of independence was to preserve slavery in the American colonies?
This is why I tend not to take seriously those who yap away endlessly about the crimes of the Nazis, but never mention the the barbarity of the USA, the British Empire etc. I was wondering the other day about how we would view Hitler today, if he had only invaded the east, and left western Europe alone. Anglosphere elites hated the Bolsheviks just as much as Hitler did.
fledanow@#3:
The US colonies revolted for their liberties the same way the southern states later did.
I lay out my version of the case here: [stderr]
Short form: England no longer allowed slavery, starting in 1772 after Somerset V Stuart and the colonies were under English law – the “freedoms” England was taking away was only slavery. It represented a huge threat to the colonies’ economy, so the colonial powerful led a revolt. The colonists also resented taxes, but within 10 years of the revolution taxes were higher in the new USA than in England – except for taxes on the rich landholders like the “founding fathers.”
I remember once on one of the blogs here (it may have been Pharyngula, but maybe another) I called the American founders “mere men” and oh did another commenter take exception to that.
It is really important to the white American psyche that the myths surrounding the founding stay intact and why so many want to bury the fact that the US was founded on genocide, theft, and slavery, not freedom and liberty. The reality of that founding is still being felt today, almost two and a half centuries later. The most blatant example is that black man became president and immediately after white America voted for an outright fascist.
(Disclaimer: As a white Canadian I have nothing to feel smug about with our country. We may not have built up our own founding into a feel-good mythology, but there are still a LOT of comfortable lies we like to tell ourselves.)
For those who have trouble with iTunes/Spotify, I see that the Uncivil podcast has other links. This feed includes URLs to MP3 files of the episodes.
It’s also worth remembering that the British Crown made treaties with Amerindian/First Nations peoples that the colonists did not wish to adhere to.
I don’t think it’s quite right to say that the United States was founded on greed and bigotry alone, but rather that it was founded on the high-minded Enlightenment principles of Liberty and Equality and universally-applicable Justice, which were in direct conflict with the bigotry and greed of a large number of the people involved, resulting in massive cognitive dissonance in those people and those who came after them. So many of those people wanted to have that liberty and equality while simultaneously wanting to be more free and equal than certain other people, yet not quite wanting to come out and say that explicitly, most of the time.
Was that Secretary of the Treasury Hamilton?
Ona escaped in 1796. Oliver Wolcott Jr. was Secretary of the Treasury from 1795 to 1800.
… Washington… He created the American south.
Nah, ’twas the other way around.
@efogoto
#10
Thanks.
I think that the importance of the Somerset case is exaggerated – Britain allowed and protected slavery for another 60 years after it, so it wasn’t as if the British Empire was on the verge of ending slavery. Britain’s colonies in the West Indies were even more reliant on slavery than the southern colonies on the mainland.
The use of the word “hypocritical” suggests that you intended to judge ol’ George by his own standards, not ours, but that did not come to pass. A minor quibble, it’s a blog post not a PhD thesis!
Still, if I have read this right, I understand this piece to boil down to this: George, judged by contemporary standards, by my and your standards, was completely odious and terrible. This is a good and worthy discussion to have, albeit incomplete. It positions us relative to our history, and that’s really important. I am completely serious: this is important stuff to do, to say, to work through.
It is also, paradoxically, a fundamentally colonialist philosophy. “Those guys, over there, while more or less compliant with their own standards, are failing utterly to comply with *my* standards, therefore we ought to go set them straight.”
I happen to subscribe to this philosophy, to some extent. I think the Saudis are odious fuckers and we jolly well ought to sort them out at the point of the sword, and if we had time travel, going back and sorting the Founding Fathers in the same way might not be amiss (_pace_ time travel stories etc, I have read all of them and know the issues.) But that just makes me a colonialist bastard, who wants to export his superior ideas violently to the rest of the world, as well as to the past. I’m just a bit less strident about it than the British and the Portugese, and I find myself short a navy in addition, so it’s pretty much just ranting about it on twitter for me.
You don’t think it’s hypocritical to claim to oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but to turn around and support tyranny when it profits you?
If it is consistent with your own moral standards to in some case “oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but to turn around and support tyranny when it profits you” then it is, by definition, not hypocrisy.
“Hypocrisy” also has a colloquial usage meaning, roughly, “inconsistent” but when you begin to peel back the covers of what it means, in practical terms, to be “consistent”, one arrives pretty quickly at a kind of relativism almost immediately, again.
Without some demonstration that George’s behavior was inconsistent with his own beliefs, or with the beliefs, ideas, morals, of the society he lived in, the use of the word “hypocrite” is gonna be a little dicey. But anyways, that’s a quibble, and we understand what Marcus intended by it when we read the posting itself. He means that, by contemporary standards, George’s behavior was not only odious, but inconsistent. And that’s fine. It’s just not quite what the title led me to imagine.
The fact he tried to conceal that he was gaming Pennsylvania law shows that he knew he was not acting according to even the morals of his day.
Also: he signed on to all that liberty and equality stuff which he obviously did not believe in. To that extent he was merely as bad as his peers, hypocrites all.
So just to make sure I understand what you mean here, was Thomas Jefferson a hypocrite or not when writing: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, and yet holding, buying, and selling slaves — his fellow men — all his life?
Would he only be a hypocrite if he had specified “all men, of any color, race, sex, or creed”? Is your argument that the lack of specificity in “all men” means that Jefferson has the loophole of actually having intended “all white European-descended males who own property” and which would thus make him not a hypocrite?
I’d have to research if Washington wrote anything similar, but if you go for the loophole in Jefferson’s case, there wouldn’t be much point, since obviously any statement of principles that lacks specificity can have loopholes.
I am not an expert on exactly what Jefferson may or may not have meant there, and to be honest, I don’t really care. I am not much interested in pursuing whether or not the use of the word “hypocrite” is appropriate here. It was always a quibble, and I have said what I have to say on that point. If you concerns are not addressed in my remarks, well, I am sorry, but there isn’t anything more.
The point is that there are two kinds of analysis one can do here:
1. Evaluate the actions of historical figures in terms of contemporary ideas, which is relatively easy, and which serves certain useful purposes.
2. Evaluate the actions of historical figures in terms of their ideas, the ideas which would have been for them “contemporary ideas” in the same sense as item 1. This is quite difficult to do an even decent job of, and it serves a set of different purposes. For instance, to make sense of George’s gaming of Philly’s laws, you’d have to see what he thought of them, which may be unknowable. Did he think of it the way we think of speeding in some crappy little town with a speed trap, or was it more like blackmail or murder laws? I don’t pretend to know, and again, I don’t much care.
In order to make much, complete, sense of, say, George Washington and his slaves, you probably need to do both.It would be useful to carefully separate them, since the two things serve different purposes.
It is disingenuous, but quite popular, to do #1 and to pretend that it is #2.
You are evading the question. I am not trying for force you to declare what Jefferson meant for certain, but only to specify the interpretation where you think it would be appropriate to declare him a hypocrite.
In #16, you certainly seem to be saying that if someone does not explicitly declare that their declared or implicit principles should apply to all humans everywhere (and does things that violate those principles), they cannot be called hypocrites, by your definition, since they might have declared or implicit exceptions to those same principles.
Or to reverse the terms, only those that explicitly declare that their declared or implicit principles should apply to all humans everywhere (and yet does things that violate those principles), can in fact be called hypocrites, by what you seem to be saying. Can you specify that that is what you indeed mean?
Is specificity in your own definitions too much for me to ask for?
But that is what you lead off with! And I am simply seeking to understand what you meant.
And despite what you claim, you are continuing the argumentation.
In the interests of clarity, I note that the term “contemporary” is itself ambiguous when speaking of the past, and can mean either “modern” or “of the time period in question”. I assume you meant “modern”, here.
More to the point, do you really think that there can be no appeal to general principles?
I am not using “hypocrisy” in a complex or subtle way, just the basic dictionary definition.
You have correctly identified by usage of “contemporary” – I use “contemporaneous” as the equivalent unmoored from the present.
Attempts to find “general principles” for ethics inevitably fail, for fairly obvious reasons. Appeals to “general principles” are invariably attempts to smuggle in ones own ethical framework. Which, for reference, I am perfectly comfortable doing, except for the smuggling.
Merriam-Webster, hypocrisy
Def 1: […] “behavior that contradicts what one claims to believe or feel”
Merriam-Webster, hypocrite
Def 2. :”a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings”
If Washington explicitly stated that he opposed to being enslaved (because being a slave is understood to be bad), then he was a hypocrite for keeping slaves. Yes?
So you would argue that no formulation of the Golden Rule can be such a general principle?
Would you describe yourself as being a moral nihilist?
I am not a moral nihilist. Perhaps I have misunderstood your “general principle” idea, though?
Let’s say that my ethics are grounded in “maximize total human happiness” which is rough, but close enough for here. I believe this is a fine general principle, and I am indeed willing to endorse, sometimes, enforcement of ideas flowing from this at, if necessary, swordpoint.
What I do not claim is that “maximize total human happiness” has any special claim to being unequivocally true. It happens to be what I believe, and I could probably write at length about why I believe it, but there is no way I am going to be able to place it on a solid rational/logical basis. It’s just the one I have, for reasons that are mostly to do with my upbringing, selected for myself. I think it’s right, I think it’s worth shoving down a few throats now and then. But I don’t think it’s rational, I don’t think it is a Platonic Truth, I think it is an arbitrary choice.
MBS seems to think that maximizing MBS’s happiness is the right answer, and everyone else be damned. I am willing to see him beheaded for his odious beliefs, and might be persuaded in his case to hoist the axe, but my choice is essentially, arbitrary.
Marcus Ranum @ 5
Thank you. That was an eye opener.
Andrew @23,
Supposed consequentialist calculus?
Ambitious, but futile. And bullshitty. I don’t believe your ethics are grounded in reality.
I don’t even believe you believe what you claim to believe. Sorry.
For me, depending on its nature, one brief bad experience may override an untold number of nice experiences, just like one single lie can ruin a reputation for honesty, no matter one’s honest history.
(Also, you do know suffering is subjective, and that people differ, no?)
@ Andrew Molitor
Your definition of the word “hypocrisy” seems odd for me. In my native language, the word that translates as “hypocrisy” means basically “to apply double standards to similar situations based on whether you personally profit or lose in any given situation.” For example, supporting exploitation when you are the one exploiting another person while opposing exploitation when you are the one being exploited would be seen as hypocritical by default. You wouldn’t get to use the excuse that “I’m a good person and I’m white, but that other person I’m exploiting is a scum and also brown and deserve to be exploited.” The fact that you sincerely hold a belief that you are better than others and deserve the privilege of applying different standards to yourself would not count as an excuse that could lift the label of hypocrite from you.
With the way how you define the word “hypocrite,” you are basically creating a huge loophole so that no person ever has to be labelled as a hypocrite. When I steal other people’s wallets, it is fine, because I need the money. When some pickpocket stole my wallet, then that was an abominable act, because that thief was a scum. When a white child in some orphanage gets denied soap and toothpaste, that’s a heinous crime, because the poor child is innocent, vulnerable, in need of protection, and white. When some Latino child on the USA border gets denied soap and toothpaste, then that’s justified, because they are scum, they are criminals, they are not white enough. When an American building gets blown up by Muslims, then that’s awful. When a Middle Eastern hospital gets blown up by American planes that dropped bombs on that hospital, then that’s acceptable. Reason: Americans are good people, Muslims are bad people. And so on. Whenever a person engages in some hypocritical acts, they always have some excuse why they are good and why the other person is bad. Hypocritical acts are always “consistent with your own moral standards” just because people who are hypocritical assholes are amazingly good at adjusting their own moral standards so as to benefit themselves. The loophole you just proposed is so immensely huge, that it applies to pretty much every hypocrite out there, the end result being that, as per your definition, hypocrisy doesn’t exist as long as the person who does something hypocritical manages to figure out some excuse so as to adjust their own moral standards.
The way how I see it, “to oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but to turn around and support tyranny when it profits you” is always hypocritical, and you don’t get to invent excuses or adjust your own moral standards so as to make it a non-hypocrisy. Of course, my own views are heavily influenced by how the idea of hypocrisy was defined in my native language. Still, if English speakers truly define the principle the way you proposed, then, well, that’s just odd. Then again, that would explain why Americans are so adamant to insist that they have never committed a genocide, that don’t have concentration camps, they have never committed any war crimes, etc. Because, after all, as per your definition, a nation who sees themselves as better than all those other brown people out there can never possibly do anything hypocritical as long as they hold moral standards that are just double standards.
When a person verbally supports the freedom of white men while simultaneously enslaving black men, I will perceive that as hypocritical, because the act itself is hypocritical and applies double standards to different groups of people. I don’t care whether the hypocrite has managed to invent some excuses in their own mind so as to somehow make their actions consistent with their own moral standards, because then said moral standards themselves are hypocritical, and also the person’s actions would be hypocritical.
John, Andreas, with all due respect neither of you appear to be taking part in the discussion that I am in.
Andrew Molitor @#27
You claimed: “Without some demonstration that George’s behavior was inconsistent with his own beliefs, or with the beliefs, ideas, morals, of the society he lived in, the use of the word “hypocrite” is gonna be a little dicey.”
I disagree with that claim.
“Let’s pursue the freedom and equality for white men while simultaneously enslaving women and black people” is a hypocritical action.
“People who look like me are inherently better than people do not look like me” is a hypocritical moral standard.
As long as double standards exist, we are dealing with a hypocrisy. When some person does hypocritical actions and tries to justify those with a hypocritical moral standard, I reserve the right to call this man a hypocrite. I don’t care whether this man sincerely believes that his excuses are valid.
I couldn’t care less what twisted moral standards and excuses the founding fathers invented in order to justify slave ownership for the same reason why I don’t care what excuses Hitler invented in order to justify the Holocaust.
If the discussion is about whether the founding fathers can or cannot be called “hypocritical,” then I already explained my position.
If the discussion is about the semantics and the proper definition of the word “hypocrite,” then that seems like a pointless discussion for me.
If the discussion is about what moral beliefs the founding fathers adopted in order to justify slavery, then I don’t care about those just like I don’t care about Hitler’s justification for why Jews deserved to be killed. Every criminal and every hypocrite will always figure out some justification for their heinous actions.
My interests here are best summarized in #19. Definition of “hypocrite” and my personal ethical position are both sidebars I am not much interested in pursuing further. While, obviously, all are welcome to carry on conversation in whatever direction they like, my contributions will be nil.
Andrew Molitor: you just got your ass beat. Sit down, boy.
#30, whatever gets you through the day.
This looks to me like a standard “cleanse the outlander, not because he is the enemy, but because he nearly agrees with us” dance that characterizes the dumpster fire that is leftist discourse, which makes me very sad, because the bad guys are fucking winning, because the good guys are idiots.
cf. Homage to Catalonia. Orwell didn’t have any answers, so it would be outlandish to suppose that I could. I keep hoping I’ll stumble across something.
Let us, as jws1 suggests, keep score.
My thesis is expressed most tidily here in #19. As far as I can determine, nobody except Marcus in #17 has even acknowledged the existence of my thesis, and therein he mounts a brief but credible attack on same. The attentive reader will notice that I fired back in #19, see remarks on “speeding”.
Given that literally nobody else has even mentioned my actual point, the scorekeeping seems to boil down to this:
Thesis -> Marcus defense #17 –> my reply in #19
Given that Marcus is a fine fellow and perfectly sharp, I am prepared to award the point to him. So, 1-0 it is.
You, therefore, are correct, jws1. Possibly not quite in the way you intended.
@Andrew Molitor:
I find it difficult to understand why you keep commenting here at all. You keep saying that you “don’t care” about what George Washington actually thought about the Philadelphia slavery mitigation laws he was getting around; you’re “not interested” in whether using the term “hypocrite” is appropriate to describe him, and so on.
If you don’t care about what you’re trying to argue, why should anyone bother engaging you? At this point, I have no idea what you actually do care about enough to even bother discussing.
That having been said, when you wrote @#23:
That, too reminded me of moral nihilism. Wikipedia:
I don’t know if you are a moral nihilist; just that what you state sounds like it. I often find moral philosophy very difficult to understand; I think ethical ideas are difficult to express clearly in general. But now I also don’t know how much you even care about trying to express them, or clarify your own expressions.
One more point for you to maybe not be interested in (WP):
Would you argue that the concept of “natural rights” and similar concepts are not relevant to analyzing George Washington’s slaveowning, since abolitionists and rationalists were “smuggling in their own ethical framework”?
Why am I posting? At this point it’s just a science experiment to see if anyone will even acknowledge my actual thesis.
If you’re actually interested in my personal ethics, drop me an email. It’s personal, squishy, and certainly not something I wish to investigate in a hostile environment. But, you know, if wanna know, we could chit-chat. I promise it ain’t that interesting. [email protected] will reach me.
As for your last paragraph, well, science experiment victory, maybe? It’s nudging up against my thesis, anyways. So, thanks!
As I have noted, repeatedly, there are two separate and different analyses one can do on a topic like this. This first is to understand George’s actions in the context of his OWN social milieu, his OWN ideas, and so on. The second is to examine those same actions in the context of now, of OUR ideas. He comes off quite a lot better in the first, which is why when writing a “George was no hero, he was AWFUL!!!!” piece, you normally use the second analysis, but try to pass it off as the first.
Anyways. To perform that first analysis, sure, the concept of “natural rights” is gonna turn up, and Enlightenment ideas are going to be all over the place. People believed these things then, and so surely these ideas are relevant. I speculate freely that they simultaneously believed them and fudged quite a lot in their day to day life, as people do. To properly do this work, to properly situate and understand ol’ George in that context, you have to at least take a stab at how people actually felt about those ideas in their day-to-day lives.
Well, you don’t *have* to, there as many approaches to historiography as there are historians. At the very least what I am describing is not some sort of weird fringe approach to history.
I do not think that Marcus has made a credible stab at this kind of work, here. I think he is doing the other thing, the understanding of ol’ George mostly in terms of modern ideas, modern thinking, where by golly George certainly does not come off looking good at all.
To be sure, I am utterly unqualified to perform the historical “in the context of then” analysis, and don’t much care about it. Marcus’s, and everyone else’s, “George was a huge dick” analysis has a great deal of contemporary relevance. George no longer meets contemporary standards for “hero” and ought to be retired. I don’t see that there should even be any controversy here. Nobody thinks Augustus Caesar should still be revered, do they? Standards move on, cultures evolve, heroes are retired. Same as it ever was.
Literally the only trouble I have with Marcus’s discussion is that he is — to my eye — attempting to pass it off as the historical analysis rather than a contemporary one, in order (I think) to give it a more weighty and shocking flavor. This is both wrong and unnecessary. To my eye.
Andrew Molitor @#32
Initially, this blog post was about how we, the people who live in 21st century, perceive the founding fathers. To quote Marcus: “Let me answer Trump’s rhetorical question: yes, tear down the statues of Washington, too.” Marcus’ conclusion was that we should stop perceiving Washington as a good man who deserves having statues, because he was a lying, slave owning asshole according to our modern standards.
Your attempt to steer the discussion towards whether Washington could be seen as an asshole also according to the moral standards that prevailed several hundred years ago was somewhat nonrelated and beside the main point made in this blog post.
Your complaint that we shouldn’t call Washington “a hypocrite” is something I already addressed—he did hypocritical actions that he defended with the help of a hypocritical moral standard, and that’s sufficient to label him a hypocrite.
But fine, this is what you wanted to discuss:
You proposed that we should evaluate Washington’s actions according to (1) his own moral opinions; (2) the prevailing moral opinions of the society he lived in.
#1 is utterly useless. What George himself thought of the laws that governed him is irrelevant. We don’t analyze what some convicted serial murderer thinks about all those laws that label his actions as a crime. Similarly, it’s irrelevant what George thought of Philadelphian laws that said he ought to free his slaves. The fact that he apparently disliked those laws doesn’t free him from getting labelled as a hypocrite.
#2 is actually pretty interesting and can be a potential inquiry for a historian. Personally, I’m very aware that it is near impossible for a single person to invent human rights if they live in a secluded society where everybody believes that abuse is a good thing. If some person lived in an isolated primitive society of cannibals where it was customary to kill and eat babies, this person probably couldn’t highhandedly invent human rights. So, yes, when a person lives inside an intellectual vacuum and never gets exposed to ideas criticizing the abuse that he is committing, then it’s understandable why this person never figured out that he was doing a bad thing. Still, I said “understandable” rather than “excusable.” We as a society cannot excuse some historical figure’s heinous acts if we decide to build statues of this person.
Moreover, I believe that Washington cannot get even this excuse. He wasn’t living in a secluded society. During his lifetime, English people had already started talking that maybe slavery is a pretty bad thing. Hell, even Americans were already expressing this sentiment. Slavery was already abolished in the very state where Washington lived. He was intentionally utilizing a loophole that allowed him to break his state’s laws. He was trying to hide the fact that he was utilizing this loophole. He lied about why a slave escaped from him. Thus it’s safe to conclude that he must have encountered the idea that slavery might be a bad idea after all. He wasn’t living in an intellectual vacuum where every single voice confirmed that slavery is the best thing imaginable. He got exposed to the idea that slavery is a bad idea, nonetheless he kept supporting it. That makes him a scum even according to the 1790ties moral standards.
Anyway, I said that this line of inquiry can be interesting for a historian, because it’s irrelevant for the public at large. When Americans put up statues for Washington, they are saying that Washington was a good man according to 21st century moral standards. There is a reason why people tore down statues of Hitler once they realized that Hitler’s actions were really bad according to post WWII moral standards.
If you want to discuss the moral beliefs about slave ownership during 1790ties, you are better off having this discussion with historians who specialize in this time period. This discussion has no practical relevance outside of history books and historical research. Moreover, only historians familiar with this time period would actually be knowledgeable about this topic. The fact that people here didn’t reply to your attempt to start a discussion about 1790ties moral attitudes towards slavery might indicate that people here don’t find this question interesting or worth discussing. Personally, I see this question as irrelevant for practical purposes and I don’t find it interesting or worth discussing. But that’s just my attitude, people have various interests, and I have no doubt that there are people who find history fascinating and would love to have this discussion with you.
@#34
You know, when people don’t reply to your points, it’s often because they find them too boring or irrelevant to be worth discussing. The fact that people haven’t replied to you does not always indicate that your idea was perceived as so incredibly smart that nobody could refute your claim. Instead it might also indicate that others perceived your point as, well, pointless and not worth discussing.
By the way, the idea that the morality of some historical figure’s actions can be analyzed in the context of the moral standards that prevailed centuries ago during this person’s lifetime is nothing new or unheard of. It’s obvious. Sometimes people don’t want to discuss things that are obvious for them, because it just seems boring.
Of course nobody has to engage my actual thesis if they don’t want to, and everyone is free to ramble on for thousands of words about what “hypocrite” might conceivably mean, and you feel about the word.
To repeatedly directly interrogate me on topics that I have explicitly stated, repeatedly, that I am not interested in strikes me simply rude, however.
“By the way, the idea that the morality of some historical figure’s actions can be analyzed in the context of the moral standards that prevailed centuries ago during this person’s lifetime is nothing new or unheard of. It’s obvious.”
Yes. Yes, it is obvious. It is not new. I did not say that it was new. Indeed, the attentive will note that I said things that make it clear I know it is not new. I am no expert on historiography, but it is not a *completely* closed book to me. I did not say it was non-obvious.
What it *is*, is un-chic in some circles. Such efforts are dismissed as mere apologia, rather too often for my taste.
Are you under the impression that I am some sort of simpleton with access to a thesaurus? I mean, it’s an interesting hypothesis, but I looking around here I have to say I don’t think it’s true. Again, though, I invite you to discuss my intellectual capacity offline, via [email protected], as it seems both startlingly uninteresting and wildly off topic.
Acknowledging your thesis is useless if you don’t care about it.
I have no idea how you came to such a confused conclusion, and I strongly doubt you care enough to elucidate.
Andrew:
On the contrary; I directly quoted your claim about your ethical basis, and directly responded to it. Pretty sure that means it was part of the discussion.
—
It relies on moral relativism, which is in contrast to your purported ethical basis.
(Of course, you don’t need to engage with my critique, either)
Owlmirror:
“Acknowledging your thesis is useless if you don’t care about it.”
Who is the antecedent of “your” and “you” in this sentence? If me, you have conflated something I don’t care about, which isn’t my thesis, with my thesis. If not me, I’m not sure what you’re trying to say.
As for Marcus’ original essay, is your contention that he did NOT intend it to be read as I read it, that as, as an indictment of George on George’s terms rather than ours? Well, #17 suggests that Marcus thinks my reading is on-point, but, it’s brief enough that I an loathe to ascribe certainty to that.
Setting that aside, why do I think Marcus is attempting to hang George by George’s standards rather than ours?
1. “hypocrite” — machinate all you like, the word comes with a side helping of “more or less his own standards” built in. It does not mean “inconsistent with some random system of ethics I pulled out of my butt.”
2. Here’s a quote that a few moments of re-skimming turns up easily:
“But, in a feat of remarkable sleaziness, Washington hit upon the dodge of rotating his slaves between Mt Vernon, in Virginia, and his residence in Philadelphia – every 75 days. He was aware that the “optics are bad” with that maneuver so he was careful to keep that secret.”
which strikes me very much as an effort to indict George by his own standards “hit upon the dodge” and “aware that” and so on seem very much to refer to things George believed, or which we can ascribe to his social milieu rather than to ours.
I could, I dare say, spend 20 minutes or so going line by line and breaking it down, but honestly I don’t see how a “no, no, Marcus is totally conducting an analysis of George by modern, contemporary, standards” is even a credible reading. This is Marcus making a stab at hanging George by George’s own standards, or at any rate by the standards of his social milieu.
Look, I like Marcus, I know he’s a smart guy, and I get it. The damned thing is even tagged “rant” so I don’t expect a high standard of intellectual clarity here. The trouble is that this particular brand of sloppiness is ubiquitous in progressive leftist thinking, and it’s a problem.
There is more to be said here, I suppose.
I should next establish that Marcus is in fact *not* conducting an actual “in his own words” indictment, but rather is smuggling in contemporary mores to do the job, but I figured I’d start out with “ok, this what he’s trying to do” and if we can’t get past that, there’s not much point in proceeding.
Andrew:
Perceived sloppiness, and only by you.
As for “smuggling in contemporary mores to do the job”, I’m pretty sure deceit and hypocrisy were no more morally acceptable back in his day than they are now.
[Silence, bored, so, another to Andrew]
There are many more than merely two, leaving aside his own social milieu spans his lifetime, because there are many social milieus within a long timeline.
It’s this purported dichotomy upon which you rely, even though Marcus made it most clear that he considers
WhatshisnameWashington to be morally lacking in both cases.(In passing, why it can supposedly be only the one or the other but not both is not stated)
@Andrew Molitor:
You don’t care about “in the context of then”, and your thesis is that the original post didn’t take into account the context of then, so your thesis is about something you don’t care about.
I thought you didn’t care what George’s terms were?
Right, George Washington’s standard was that being enslaved was bad and wrong, so he was doing wrong by keeping slaves.
Ah, but you don’t care what George’s system of ethics were, so you can’t say that they weren’t pulled out of George’s butt.
If you don’t care about not being sloppy, why should anyone else?
I say, I say, I say, what’s worse, ignorance or apathy? [pause] I don’t know and I don’t care!
*ba-dum-tish*
Andrew Molitor doesn’t care about this:
But for those who do care, I note that Marcus was citing the podcast linked in the OP, with alternate links @#2 & #7.
One of the things that the transcript (link @#2) states is:
(bolding mine)
Ms Dunbar is paraphrasing, but here’s the actual citation from a letter from George Washington to Tobias Lear, the secretary in question. Specifically, Washington to Lear, April 12, 1791, Richmond, VA (this page is actually a collection of several letters, some from Washington to Lear; some from Lear to Washington):
(bolding mine)
Ok, your persistent inability to grasp my thesis tells me we have arrived at the stage of Internet Disagreement where the game is to willfully misunderstand basically everything the other guy says, challenge every line based on absurd misreadings, and stand around receiving the accolades of my peers. “Hurr hurr hurr him losing, hurr hurr” but it’s really a wrapper around a failure of reading comprehension.
I’ve written literally millions of words that have been read and understood by other people with little difficulty. It ain’t me, it’s you.
Glad I didn’t spend time wrapping the argument up.
Boasting is cheap and easy.
I also note that you rejected repeated requests for clarification with “not interested” and “don’t care”.
Nope.
You don’t care about wrapping the argument up.
Actually I had a draft, which I shan’t write up given that you paid exactly no attention to the first part. It was an interesting exercise, and a little trickier than I thought.
Cue: “You’re just lying, you lying liar thing liar you never”
I gotta say, in the sweepstakes of “crazy stuff people say” you’re not placing well. I had a guy who decided I had said “racism didn’t exist in 1969” which was extremely bizarre, especially when his kind-hearted friends started earnestly explaining to me that it actually did exist then, with links and whatnot.
That was a definite WAT? moment.
Andrew Molitor wrote:
Boasting is cheap and easy.
Andrew Molitor wrote:
but also wrote:
While I am pleased to see you quoting things I have said that are obviously true, it’s not clear why you’re bothering. I think everyone is capable of looking up “hypocrisy” to see what it means.
Is this a compliment of some sort?
Andrew:
Heh. Rhetorical techniques are not your forte.
BTW, hypocrisy is a contrast between one’s professed beliefs and one’s actual actions. It has nothing to do with one’s actual beliefs.
Andrew Molitor wrote:
But Andrew Molitor also wrote:
[Little give-aways, my markup]
(Need I elaborate?)
I wonder if Andrew claimed to not care about what George Washington actually thought because ultimately, he knew or suspected that his argument leads to
tortiositytortiousnessinfinite regress.A: You don’t think it’s hypocritical to claim to oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but to turn around and support tyranny when it profits you?
B: If it is consistent with your own moral standards to in some case “oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but to turn around and support tyranny when it profits you” then it is, by definition, not hypocrisy.
A: So in order to definitely be hypocritical, you have to claim to oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, turn around and support tyranny when it profits you, and claim to always oppose tyranny?
B: By no means. If it is consistent with your own moral standards to in some case “oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, turn around and support tyranny when it profits you, and claim to always oppose tyranny” then it is, by definition, not hypocrisy.
A: So in order to really be hypocritical, you have to claim to oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but turn around and support tyranny when it profits you, and claim to always oppose tyranny, and claim to have no contradictory moral standards?
B: No. If it is consistent with your own moral standards to in some case “oppose tyranny when it afflicts you, but turn around and support tyranny when it profits you, and claim to always oppose tyranny, and claim to have no contradictory moral standards” then it is, by definition, not hypocrisy.
[. . .]
( “Plenty of empty storage spaces for comments, I see!” B cheerily remarked. “We shall need them all!”)
[. . .]
[musical interlude: Hotel California]
A king may support his own tyranny, believing his crown to be God-given, and yet oppose the tyranny of a neighbor on the grounds that his neighbor’s crown was won by treachery and usurpation. This is the story of essentially every internecine battle for a throne.
Yes, it is a rationalization. No, you cannot wrap your mind around that ethical system, because you are remarkably limited. Yes, both of the kings are probably awful people.
The first king is, however, not a *hypocrite* in this instance, despite his many flaws. This is not rocket science, people, and it does not matter if he *states* his position, *truly believes* it, or indeed if it is merely the position espoused by most of his courtiers.
Your infinite regress, I don’t even know how to say this kindly, it’s stupid. I could write a bunch of words explaining exactly where the wheels fall off, but you would dismiss them, so what would be the point? You simply haven’t got the chops to pull this kind of thing off, and you believe, fervently, that you do. There is nothing to be done about that.
You also appear to wish fervently is that “hypocrite” means “a bad person” (well, actually, what you wish fervently is that Molitor Be Wrong, and also Be Gone), but the word simply doesn’t mean that. I am, slightly, sorry, but there isn’t anything I can do about any of this.
You are fully entrenched, and there is simply no shifting you, no matter how blatently blockheaded your remarks.
Andrew:
Priceless!
You might just as sensibly tack on “eating ${pastry}” phrases to Owlmirror’s infinitely regressing statement, John, plugging in croissant, donut, cruller, and so on. So, sure, there’s an infinite regress, but it leads nowhere. It makes as much sense as
A. So, rockets normally go down, into the ocean?
B. No, the are intended to go upwards.
A. Oh, so rockets are supposed to go down, into the ocean, while eating a croissant?
B. God, no, shut up. They go up, you imbecile.
A. Oh, so rockets are supposed to go down, into the ocean, while eating a croissant, that is eating a donut?
B. MARGE!!!! GET THE POKING STICK, WE GOTTA WHACKO ON THE PORCH AGIN!
A. Oh, so, rockets are supposed to go down, into the ocean, eating a croissant, that is eating a donut, which is in turn eating a cruller?
etc. Mine has the singular virtue of being funnier, but makes exactly as much sense. The main structural difference is that Owlmirror’s doesn’t even have a pattern, you have to think up a new extender phrase every kick at the can.
If you’re as clever as you imagine yourself to be, you have already seen this, John. Or did you skipped actually reading it, and just assumed that Owlmirror had Score a Good ‘Un Hurr Hurr.
Um, sorry Andrew, perhaps I should not chortle so.
So, your thesis is that historical characters may be judged either by their epochal circumstantial and local mores or by our current circumstantial and local mores, but not by both, and that Marcus breached this perceived dichotomy by adducing both.
Not exactly a well-received thesis, was it?
(I do like being thus studiously ignored, BTW. Ta)
Andrew:
Ah. We crossed, but good to know I’m not just limited to kibitzing.
I’m sure I’m not as clever as you think I think I am, but I am pretty sure I am about as clever as I think I am (maybe a bit over one, one and a half SD over the mean). It’s not my intelligence, it’s the way I think that makes you think I think I am cleverer than I think I am.
—
Perhaps instead of spending time composing supposed parallel forms of an allegorical summation of your strategy or opining about my cleverness, you could attempt to justify how moral relativism supposedly matters in this instance, for that is to what your objection boils down.
(Not saying you should, of course. Perish the thought!)
Boasting is cheap and easy.
No, you can’t. Each addition to the regress is a claim about beliefs, not an action.
It’s your argument, not mine, that claims about beliefs vs actual actions don’t matter with respect to hypocrisy, because according to you one can always have an additional belief that reconciles the claims of beliefs with the actions that contradict the claims.
It’s a pattern that follows if your statement about hypocrisy is correct.
Your psychological projection is noted, by the way.
[I made an error at #62, not being all that clever. Easily spotted, but]
Not really, John, #61. You have some of the parts, but you’ve assembled them wrong. It’s all there in #19.
Owlmirror, you remind me of a fellow with the improbable name of Daniel C. Blight, whose essays you might like.
Oddly enough, you in turn remind me of a disputant using the improbable ‘nym of “help ma boab”.
Formal argument is not exactly an optimal method for establishing the correct answer to a yes/no question of fact.
[Quietude]