Mostly just lurking, but for clarification, what racist posts reflected his views? Like "not all were his views" leaves room for some of them to be.

Doesn't this essentially mean the question should be HOW racist, as opposed to whether or not he is one?

This is a lie. DS brought up plenty of abolitionist points. You're right that there were more people there defending Jefferson than calling him pond scum. Most of us were trying to make the point that thinking of slavery as wrong was a relatively new concept (like say, burning fossil fuels is today), and that you could forgive a lot of really smart people for not immediately freeing all their slaves and going bankrupt, especially those who were working to make it possible.

To clarify, there were certainly racists ideas within those posts, and we were examining what parts of the ideas had merit and what parts didn't. Some of the things he agreed with were probably racist if taken at face value, but considering the nature of the academic conversation, what he was trying to accomplish (in the slavery thread, defending US founding fathers) one shouldn't assume they represented his own concrete ideals.

Well yeah, their behavior, which I have characterized, does inhibit discussion and social ability. I am doing my part.

Look how mischaracterized a short witticism about the vox link I posted is already just a few posts later.

If you would like to contend any specific characterizations or accusations I have made, please provide the related posts and argue against my criticisms, rather than simply contend I am being critical in a room full of critics.

Posters can be called a racists, bullies, narrow-minded, or ignorant-each can be fairly contended with information and observations of the behavior being criticized.

Opinion only goes so far when it is not backed with signs of fair judgment and full accountability for all the information available.

The moderators wear no clothes.

What racist ideas did he determine to have merit?

The pink elephant in the room remains the philosophical freedom to share ideas and share the understanding why most any of them maybe correct or mistaken.

Cue the mocking bird soundtrack.

Im awaiting the exciting conclusion of this campaign to determine if Bruce ends up not banned and allowed to post freely on twoplustwo rather than not banned and allowed to post freely on twoplustwo.

No, this is a lie. Sklansky made abolitionist arguments, sure, but he cited no 18th century writers. These posts were made as arguments against Sklansky, that he wasn't considering the prevailing thoughts of the day.

This is correct.

Yes, it's true tons of people were trying to make that point. It's a point that also is empirically false. There was considerable anti-slavery literature in the day. Florida, then a Spanish colony, was anti-slavery. The ruling I cited earlier for you was 1772. No one spoke for this body of work. You're still pretending it doesn't exist.

Tons of empirically false **** went unchallenged in that thread. Bruce claimed that for a slave born into slavery and not knowing anything else, it wasn't such a bad life. Had he never heard of Dred Scott, you know, a slave born into slavery who tried his darnedest to not be a slave anymore? What about Harriett Tubman? Was she actually a lunatic who didn't have her own self-interest in mind for escaping, and then helping others escape, despite the fact that she and they were all born into slavery and didn't know anything better until they escaped?

lol

I do not think that is clearly determinable without a time machine and a precision thought scanner.

The awareness and understanding of how prejudices are formed from the more recent posts does indicate a mind that would have no problem personally rejecting racist think from having an understanding why it is mistaken.

Mr wookie still mad about dead racists. He is like doing a seance, conjuring ghostly outraged dead abolitionists to support his opinion.

MrWook, I'm not sure you understand what "relatively new" means. Anyway, your contribution to the thread would have been welcome, assuming you could have minded your manners

So a quick search demonstrates that spank, who is making some DEEP soul reads on Bruce here, has all of one post in smp prior to a month ago and that was in a thread from 2009.

But sure- we should ignore Bruce's racist posts because we know Bruce isn't racist because Bruce (who is pretty clearly ignorant as **** in these areas) says he isn't racist and only racists can be racists and we can't know if they're racist unless we have all the context in the world (which is more meaningful than actually racist speech).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism

Four hundred years, bro. Four hundred years.

I must say, the theory that Jefferson may have come into contact with abolitionists is wonderfully provocative, even if theoretical. Can you imagine if someone unearthed some kind of primary historical materials documenting such an encounter? Wow. IANAH but I bet you could get a PHD dissertation out of that!

Good point. I guess slavery was abolished shortly thereafter worldwide. For someone running a politics forum, you seem to have little grasp on how politics works.

Also cute to see spank's newly invented philosophy discussion as as safe place defense. As if somehow the context of a philosophical discussion means being super racist is cool.

Btw Wookie I think you're a racist. Now Foldem let's see if Wookie posts today.

Huh? Are you just going to change your argument everytime wookie proves you're full of ****?

You asserted that "thinking of slavery as wrong was a relatively new concept (like say, burning fossil fuels is today)." It was not a new concept in 1776. It was hundreds of years old. The first notable country to act upon that idea was France in 1315, but surely you'll grant that in order for France to act upon that idea in 1315, the idea had to be older than the act. Furthermore, you made the comparison that the idea that slavery is wrong to the idea that fossil fuels are harmful today. Fossil fuels haven't been abolished anywhere yet. You're not making a fair argument if "slavery is wrong" is a manifest idea if and only if it's been put into practice world wide, but "fossil fuels are wrong" is a manifest idea now even if they've not been banned anywhere.

Furthermore, if you kept reading the article, you'd see that yes, there was considerable growth in the abolition movement in the centuries following 1315 to the point that anyone of Jefferson's standing and education would have certainly heard the argument against slavery.

Dids abusing the scary emotional appeal of racism to attack a person. The kind of behavior expected from a bigot.

No, the point is the concept was not accepted in all societies, and was relatively new (yes, even 400 years is relatively new in the grand scheme of human civilisation). It wasn't the 20th/21st century, where you could influence masses of people through TV and the internet. Racism was accepted in huge parts of the world and so was slavery. Even today, there's still much of the world who have illiberal ideals, I guess every individual living there are scum?

Im confused again, was Bruce taking a contrarian but obviously racist position with intentional logical flaws or was he posting well thought out ideas based upon the norms of the pre civil war era?

I broke that into phrases and ran it through random.org and then formatted it back into a pargraph- makes the same amount of sense:

Again, your ideas are provocative but unfair. This was 200 years ago, it wasn't exactly like they had the internet back then. How could you possibly expect Jefferson to be an expert of French policy - a country thousands of miles away! We are talking about a plantation owner from an agricultural country, it's not reasonable to assume he was an expert of comparative jurisprudence.