Was It Because They Didn't Wear Moccasins?

I am currently reading and thoroughly enjoying C. Bradley Thompson's masterful America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It.

To say the book is awe-inspiring and thought-provoking would be a gross understatement.

Here is just one example in the form of a passage leading up to Thompson's thoughtful exploration of the contradiction between the abhorrent institution of slavery in early America and the noble ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

Image by Stephen Leonardi, via Unsplash, license.

These are difficult, even painful, questions. To answer them honestly and accurately, however, we must resist our contemporary inclination to assume as fact that America's revolutionary founders were imprisoned by the biases of their own time even as we condemn them for holding those biases. Such an approach prevents us from truly understanding and accurately judging their ideas and actions. Those ideas and actions should first be understood and judged by the founders' own perspective and standards before we apply our own standards to past thought and action. [bold added]

One just about cannot help thinking of the 1619 Project and the poisonous culture (esp. at "Revenge of the Lost Boys") that permeates our society and institutions, especially our educational sector. Most remarkably, under the cover of extirpating racism, a noble cause, white males in general and the Founders in particular are being discounted as congenitally unable to be anything other than racists and, at the same time, condemned and marginalized for it!

When speaking of the morally obscene notions of original sin and racism, Ayn Rand properly noted the contradiction between morality and the incorrect idea that man has no free will.

And yet, too many people -- who preach at those they condemn that they should, for example, "Walk a mile in someone's moccasins," before judging them -- can't be bothered to do exactly this regarding the Founders. Thompson does, however, evenhandedly examining their virtues and their flaws. These are the men, not always perfect, that Thompson convincingly argues got the ball of emancipation rolling when they declared in no uncertain terms that all men are equal.

It is common and understandable, but rarely correct, to stop at calling out hypocrisy, particularly on the part of an intellectual opponent: It is too easy to look like one agrees with said opponent, when that opponent may be partly or completely wrong. This is especially true of the left, whose stock-in-trade is to pay lip service to some ideal -- like racial equality or scientific understanding -- while using it for cover to promote, say, new forms of racial discrimination or unscientific and anti-freedom policies that could result in millions of deaths.

But it can be valuable to point out hypocrisy along with where one stands by contrast, and to ask why someone would be hypocritical.

Within his discussion, Thompson -- a friend to the Founders and their ideals -- hardly shies away from doing this regarding their tolerance of slavery in the nation they founded; It speaks volumes that so many on the left hypocritically do not do this.

We should be asking ourselves why. Why do so many leftists demand that we empathize with anyone and everyone, from the genuinely oppressed (who deserve empathy) all the way to the kinds of criminals who have forfeited it -- and yet self-righteously refuse to do so with America's Founders?

-- CAV