# The Republican Party celebrates and endorses racism and evil as expressed in the constitution **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 7, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709 "2011-01-07T03:56:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pierrot_Le_Fou)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/1 "2011-01-07T03:56:21Z")
Today the Republican Party read the entire US constitution. They claim that the framers created a great document that was a force for good. I say that the constitution, as it was passed, was evil and racist. Not only did it fail to outlaw racially-based slavery (thus condemning millions to lives of pain and misery), it PROTECTED SLAVERY. > [@Evil](#): > > No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. > > […] > > No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. > > […] > > Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article And these are just the most obvious ways the constitution protected slavery. Our current form of government was racist and evil from the start. Today the Republicans celebrated and endorsed racism and evil. Anyone want to claim that the US constitution was not racist and evil? The Republican Party cannot claim they did not know the constitution protected slavery since they read the entire document. We can only conclude that they knew exactly what they were celebrating. The Republicans have taken the first step to bringing more racism and evil back into the world. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/2 "2011-01-07T04:08:11Z")
Another form of prejudice – by no means as pernicious as racism, but still unfair-- is [“presentism,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29) judging people and writings and ideas of times past by today’s standards, to a degree that assumes they somehow should have **known** those were the right standards. The U.S. Constitution was a radically progressive thing **for its time.** Our descendants one day will look back at 2011 as a cruel and barbarous age, when dogs were enslaved and women free. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/3 "2011-01-07T04:13:09Z")
Just to be clear, are you saying that anyone who supports or endorses the constitution is racist and evil? ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/4 "2011-01-07T04:13:16Z")
It’s not like abolitionists did not exist at the time. Slavery had been outlawed in many places by thoe time of the framing, iirc. No. Tey knew what it was they were protecting. It was evil. And I believe they knew it to be. I also think that it was either that or risk having it all fall apart. There were just too many people invested in the enterprise of human misery. Didn’t some of the founders express concern ove slavery? ---
**Author:** ![Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pierrot_Le_Fou)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/5 "2011-01-07T04:15:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Another form of prejudice – by no means as pernicious as racism, but still unfair-- is [“presentism,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29) judging people and writings and ideas of times past by today’s standards, to a degree that assumes they somehow should have **known** those were the right standards. The U.S. Constitution was a radically progressive thing **for its time.** Bullshit. Plenty of people\* knew, and argued, that slavery was evil before the 1780s. - including some of the framers ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/6 "2011-01-07T04:22:12Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > It’s not like abolitionists did not exist at the time. Slavery had been outlawed in many places by thoe time of the framing, iirc. > > No. Tey knew what it was they were protecting. It was evil. And I believe they knew it to be. > > I also think that it was either that or **risk having it all fall apart.** Art of the possible, the perfect is the enemy of the good, etc. The slave states would not have joined in any national government that presented any potential threat to their peculiar institution, no one was in a position to make them join, and it’s not as if **not** forming a more perfect Union would have freed any slave on the continent. North America might have ended up as fragmented as South America, and any widespread abolitionist movement would have provoked the independent slave states to seal their borders tight as North Korea’s. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/7 "2011-01-07T04:23:18Z")
Actually, they [cut the parts about slavery out](http://gawker.com/5726602/congress-will-read-the-constitution-minus-the-icky-slavery-parts) when reading it out loud today. ---
**Author:** ![Xema](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/9de053/32.png) [@Xema](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Xema)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/8 "2011-01-07T04:30:13Z")
**The Republican Party celebrates and endorses racism and evil as expressed in the constitution** And - far worse - the President takes an oath to _preserve, protect and defend_ this foul document. Simply shocking. Thank God for Democrats in Congress who courageously turn their backs on this evil legacy. ---
**Author:** ![Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pierrot_Le_Fou)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/9 "2011-01-07T04:32:21Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > Actually, they [cut the parts about slavery out](http://gawker.com/5726602/congress-will-read-the-constitution-minus-the-icky-slavery-parts) when reading it out loud today. That is even worse. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/10 "2011-01-07T04:36:10Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Bullshit. Plenty of people\* knew, and argued, that slavery was evil before the 1780s. > > - including some of the framers Even that requires qualification. The first abolitionist organization in America [was not formed (by Quakers) until 1775.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolitionism#Calls_for_abolition) Jefferson – a radical for his time and place – believed in principle that the blacks should be freed, but also that, being freed, they would have to be deported . . . somewhere . . . being just too **different** (read: inferior) to share the same republican society with white people as equals. (His attitude towards Indians was entirely different – he anticipated and welcomed a racial merger with them.) And then there was the whole “wolf by the ears” problem – white people in slave states, not just slave owners but **all** white people, lived in constant fear of a slave uprising leading to mass butchery of whites (the kind of thing that actually happened in Haiti in 1791), and feared any threat to slavery as tending in that direction, and therefore regarded abolitionists with the kind of horror directed at Communists in the 20th Century. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/11 "2011-01-07T04:39:42Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > That is even worse. No, [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=591735) is even worse. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f475e1/32.png) [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pierrot_Le_Fou)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/12 "2011-01-07T04:58:53Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > No, [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=591735) is even worse. 😉 Huck Finn publishers cannot bring back Jim Crow. The Republican Party can, and now that they aligned with the Tea Party\*, bringing back Jim Crow is clearly one of their plans. - its been clear since Nixon and the Southern Strategy. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/13 "2011-01-07T05:04:22Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Huck Finn publishers cannot bring back Jim Crow. The Republican Party can, and now that they aligned with the Tea Party\*, bringing back Jim Crow is clearly one of their plans. > > - its been clear since Nixon and the Southern Strategy. It’s been clear since Nixon that they will exploit white racial resentment rhetorically and imagistically to win votes, and **maybe** try to roll back affirmative action and cut HEAD START and things out of the budget. But Jim Crow has the same resurrection prospects as the Nuremberg Laws. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/14 "2011-01-07T06:40:00Z")
> [@Pierrot\_Le\_Fou](#): > > Today the Republican Party read the entire US constitution. They claim that the framers created a great document that was a force for good. > > I say that the constitution, as it was passed, was evil and racist. Not only did it fail to outlaw racially-based slavery (thus condemning millions to lives of pain and misery), it PROTECTED SLAVERY. > > And these are just the most obvious ways the constitution protected slavery. > > Our current form of government was racist and evil from the start. Today the Republicans celebrated and endorsed racism and evil. Anyone want to claim that the US constitution was not racist and evil? > > The Republican Party cannot claim they did not know the constitution protected slavery since they read the entire document. We can only conclude that they knew exactly what they were celebrating. The Republicans have taken the first step to bringing more racism and evil back into the world. Did they neglect to read the amendments that fixed that? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/15 "2011-01-07T06:41:03Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Another form of prejudice – by no means as pernicious as racism, but still unfair-- is [“presentism,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29) judging people and writings and ideas of times past by today’s standards, to a degree that assumes they somehow should have **known** those were the right standards. The U.S. Constitution was a radically progressive thing **for its time.** > > Our descendants one day will look back at 2011 as a cruel and barbarous age, when dogs were enslaved and women free. The slavery part was not at all progressive for its time. It didn’t really exist in very many places anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 6:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/16 "2011-01-07T06:42:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It’s been clear since Nixon that they will exploit white racial resentment rhetorically and imagistically to win votes, and **maybe** try to roll back affirmative action and cut HEAD START and things out of the budget. But Jim Crow has the same resurrection prospects as the Nuremberg Laws. Didn’t Nixon start affirmative action? ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 10:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/17 "2011-01-07T10:03:29Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > The slavery part was not at all progressive for its time. It didn’t really exist in very many places anymore. Simply not true: you’re forgetting Africa, Asia (particularly China), and India. And possibly Russia (granted they were called serfs by that time). ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/18 "2011-01-07T10:58:19Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Another form of prejudice – by no means as pernicious as racism, but still unfair-- is [“presentism,”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_%28literary_and_historical_analysis%29) judging people and writings and ideas of times past by today’s standards, to a degree that assumes they somehow should have **known** those were the right standards. The U.S. Constitution was a radically progressive thing **for its time.** They did know better. That’s just engaging in the standard attempt to whitewash our ancestors by pretending that knowing evil was only invented some time in the 20th century and that our ancestors were completely mindless and ignorant. Which makes them look like “moral” morons, so it isn’t much of an improvement anyway. Just like modern people, the people of the past did things they knew were wrong, and they did it all the time. These are people who declared that all men were created equal and then treated some as slaves and others as inferiors; that’s hypocrisy, not ignorance. > [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Our descendants one day will look back at 2011 as a cruel and barbarous age, when dogs were enslaved and women free. Then our descendants will be monsters, and morally inferior to us because women are people and dogs are not. We are morally superior to our ancestors. It’s called progress. ---
**Author:** ![Baboonanza](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f475e1/32.png) [@Baboonanza](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baboonanza)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/19 "2011-01-07T11:28:59Z")
I think he meant that dogs should be free _also_, not that women should be enslaved. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2011, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709/20 "2011-01-07T13:06:29Z")
> [@Baboonanza](#): > > I think he meant that dogs should be free _also_, not that women should be enslaved. Hey, let’s not be too hasty here! The idea intrigues me! [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-republican-party-celebrates-and-endorses-racism-and-evil-as-expressed-in-the-constitution/566709.md?page=2)