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Tuesday, March 29, 2016

The founding fathers on voting rights

The Founding fathers have been hammered by liberals for years that they were racists and discriminated against others in a variety of issues. Voting rights is one of them. However, voting is not a right. If it was, ten year olds could vote. People should qualify to vote. Qualification was apart of the hostility against democracy; what liberals enjoy. Contrary to what lib judges that claim the "prevailing opinion of the framers" was that blacks were "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect …and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." (Former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.)


Here are some of the conclusions reached in this book:
On slavery: Every leading Founder acknowledged that slavery was wrong. Slavery was legal and practiced in every state in 1776; by the end of the founding era, more than a hundred thousand slaves had been freed by the outlawing of slavery in seven of the original thirteen states or by individual acts of manumission, especially in the South. Most important, the ground for the eventual total abolition of slavery was laid in establishment of the equality principle at the center of the American polity by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Washington, and other leading Founders.

On the poor: Far from being indifferent to the poor, the Founders regarded the protection of private property rights as a necessary means for the poor to escape the kind of subjugation by the wealthy that they had experienced in Old Europe. And far from throwing the needy into the streets, the Founders maintained government-funded "safety-net" programs for them. Their property rights and welfare policies, which are often scorned today for their supposed indifference to the poor, were arguably more just and compassionate than ours.
On women: Women were understood by everyone to be included in the "all men" (all human beings) who are created equal. In New Jersey, women voted in elections routinely during the 1790s and early 1800s, for the first time anywhere in world history. This fact, as we will see, is clearly connected to the Founders' equality principle. So also was the idea, which grew during and after the founding era, that women and men have equal importance, but different roles, in the family and society. The best protection of women's rights, in the minds of both the men and the women of the founding era, was the core private association of a free and civilized society: lifelong marriage and the family. The alternatives—permitting no-fault divorce, pushing women into the job market, and legitimizing the treatment of women (and men) as sex objects—were thought to dehumanize and exploit, not liberate.

On the supposedly undemocratic electorate: Far from excluding the poor, the electorate in the founding era was the most democratic of any large nation in history. It included about 85 to 90 percent of free males. Those Founders who defended a property requirement for voting did so, not in opposition to, but on the basis of, the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence. They feared—as we will see, not without reason—that the propertyless poor might become the tools of influential and wealthy demagogues, distorting election results and endangering the survival of liberty. They changed their minds on this point as it became increasingly clear that the poor were not opponents but friends of the rights of mankind, including the right to acquire and possess property.
On naturalization and citizenship: The Founders' policy generously welcomed as equal citizens people from many nations and religions. However, there was a concern that immigrants might come in numbers too large, or from countries too despotic, to assimilate to the American way of life. There was also a concern that newcomers would not possess, or be in a position to acquire soon, the principles and habits necessary for democratic citizenship. Naturalization in early America was therefore limited primarily to those who had been formed by Western civilization. Still, the American way of life was informed by the universal principles of the Declaration. So although the Founders expected most immigrants to come from Europe, their principles made it possible for people of every race and continent to become, in Lincoln's phrase, "blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh" of the Founding Fathers who came before them.
http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/preface/

8 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

Exc. I've been a fan of Dr. Tom West for years. You can't go wrong with him at your back.

On slavery: Every leading Founder acknowledged that slavery was wrong. Slavery was legal and practiced in every state in 1776

Yes, and every time a lib is losing an argument about the Founding, they overturn the chessboard with slavery and say the Founding principles mean nothing.

This is a good counterargument. Just because the Virginians didn't live up to their principles does not make those principles invalid.
_________________________________
Great West articles from Claremont

http://www.claremont.org/crb/contributor-list/460/

Our Founding Truth said...

Larry Elder mentioned only ten percent of the total population of the south owned black slaves. The number of free whites that weren't property owners couldn't have been so small a number as to be irrelevant.

Libs control the universities and spread revisionist history throughout the land.

AlongtheRedRiveroftheNorth said...

Can you specifically name "the Founders maintained government-funded 'safety-net' programs"?

Tom Van Dyke said...

Larry Elder mentioned only ten percent of the total population of the south owned black slaves.

In fairness, that may be only technically true. There was a study some years back that maintained many Johnny Rebs were invested in the continuation of slavery, and the statistic only counted the father-slaveowner, although his sons and daughters would eventually inherit them and so in reality were slaveowners too.

Glad Larry Elder's national again. Had him for years here in LA but he was off the air for years--he just made it back at Salem Broadcasting with help from longtime friend Dennis Prager.

Our Founding Truth said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Our Founding Truth said...

Larry took over Hugh Hewitt's slot. I thought you lived in northern cali for some reason.

Our Founding Truth said...

The federalists passed a bill signed by Adams taxing ship captains for health care for their crews.
https://www.scribd.com/mobile/doc/29099806/Act-for-the-Relief-of-Sick-DisabledSeamen-July-1798

I can't see the democrats at that time promoting something like this, but this appears to be a good idea.

Our Founding Truth said...

The founding fathers made sure the poor were taken care of; by community governments.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2015/05/poverty-and-welfare-in-the-american-founding