Freedom for All?
Reflections on a Revolution, Part II
By Robert Ringer
Many of the Founding Fathers were slave owners, most notably George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. So when Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, what in the world was he thinking when he wrote 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?”
It’s clear from their biographies that Jefferson (with about 200 slaves), Washington (with more than 300 slaves), and other slave-owning Founding Fathers knew that slavery was inherently wrong. But the issue was a hot potato in the colonies – a politically incorrect topic, so to speak.
The Continental Congress debated the matter, but, in the end, its members did what politicians have always done: They simply “kicked the can down the road,” leaving it up to a later generation to handle the problem. Their thinking was, “Let’s put our oxygen masks on first, then worry about saving the slaves later.”
What made all this even more bizarre was that at the time of the American Revolution, Rhode Island was a major slave-trafficking state in the North. George Washington, ever relentless in his search for able-bodied men, struck a deal whereby any slave who agreed to fight for the Continental Army would earn his freedom.
Talk about choosing your poison. If you’re a Rhode Island slave and you don’t sign up for active duty, you remain a slave, presumably for life. If you do sign up to fight on the side of the colonists, the chances of your not living to enjoy your freedom were excellent.
And if you were a southern slave, you and your progeny were destined to live in the new land of the free as slaves for another eighty years or so, just because otherwise brave and moral men were not willing to include you in their freedom manifesto.
It makes you wonder how many times throughout human history generations have suffered just because men in power were not willing, for any one of myriad reasons, to step up to the plate and insist on justice for all. In the case of our Founding Fathers, nearly a century of misery for African-Americans could have been avoided had they been willing to do so.
In the famous words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And today, nearly two and a half centuries later, evil still prevails in America, and good men (presuming they are out there somewhere) seem unwilling to do anything about it. Of course, slavery in 21st century America is quite different from the 18th century variety – but the number of slaves has grown dramatically.
Chains and whips are no longer used – or needed. Today’s rulers are much smarter than either the British or colonial patriots in the 1700s. Democracy has proven to be a far more effective tool for controlling people than chains and brute force.
Today, we have embraced George Orwell’s “doublethink” as described in his classic novel 1984. As Orwell explained it, doublethink is the ability of a person to maintain two contradictory beliefs in his mind at the same time and accept both of them without conflict. Doublethink does not involve saying the opposite of what one thinks, but thinking the opposite of what is true. (This is precisely what happened to the minds of those who drank too much Obama-Aid during the last presidential campaign.)
Sadly, Americans have bought into the ultimate doublethink described in Orwell’s book: “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.” Our chains are now called “entitlements,” and they are one of the main reasons we so love our enslavement. And so long as we allow ourselves to remain ignorant, those chains are guaranteed to remain in place.
In the next article in this Fourth of July series: Is the Constitution valid?
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. Ringer has appeared on numerous national talk shows and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron’s, and The New York Times. To sign up for his one-of-a-kind, pro-liberty e-letter, A Voice of Sanity in an Insane World, visit www.RobertRinger.com
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ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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Thomas Jefferson didn’t write 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?” Thomas Paine wrote those words.
Thomas Paine is the true author of the Declaration of Independence. See the book “Thomas Paine, Author of the Declaration of Independence” by Joseph Lewis. Freethought Press Assn. New York. 1947
Joseph Lewis proves to any thinking person that only Thomas Paine could have written the Declaration. Others participated but the basic draft and wording could only have been written by Paine.
The obvious form of enslavement is taxation. Bastiat wrote an excellent short book about this, called The Law. I recommend everyone read it. Some more subtle forms of enslavement include the practice of vices (people enslaved to vices don’t fight for liberty) and abortion. Abortion enslaves women. Not only is informed consent rarely given, nearly 2/3 of women report coercion. And abortion causes many women to suffer serious emotional problems, which is also enslaving. Obviously those who suffer medical damage are also being enslaved. Slavery is often promoted by the government, but the government is not the only source of slavery. A consistent libertarian philosophy will recognize these other forms of slavery. Never forget that we are a minority, and the majority is forcing us to pay the cost of people’s enslavement to vices, through our taxes. So the practice of vices really enslaves everybody.
Really excellent points .. something for everyone to think about.
The constitution was written for the norms of the time. The Constitution is valid now as ever. Our founders and those that followed began almost immediately to make the term “all men” to mean all men (and women) excluding no one.
Now and then?
> Today, we have embraced George Orwell’s “doublethink”
[..]
> the ability of a person to maintain two contradictory
> beliefs in his mind at the same time
> and to accept both of them without conflict.
Were not the Founding Fathers “doublethinkers” as well?
Based on the next statements:
> Founding Fathers were slave owners,
and they signed the following:
> “all men are created equal, [..] Life, Liberty
> and the pursuit of Happiness?”
I might be missing something, but looks like double thinking.
P.S.
I understand slavery was a common practice, and the norm of the time.
Still, Slavery is the opposite of Freedom.
Now, and then.
Regards.