Since humans weren't "created", they evolved over time. What does it mean about the quote from the U.S.'s Declaration of Independence "all men were created equal"
Discuss.
I think what they were alluding to, was that there was no natural right to be a Nobleman. The King was nothing special, he farted like the rest of us.
The intent was that legally there were not peers, just other people. While we say a right of trial before a person's peers, we don't mean common men or lords. We mean other people not normally involved in the judiciary.
And of course, the signers of the Declaration of Independence didn't see Negros, Indians, or women as being created equal to men. Because they obviously weren't real men. At least to them.
Good words wasted on ignorant people, in my opinion.
Quote from: "LikelyToBreak"I think what they were alluding to, was that there was no natural right to be a Nobleman. The King was nothing special, he farted like the rest of us.
The intent was that legally there were not peers, just other people. While we say a right of trial before a person's peers, we don't mean common men or lords. We mean other people not normally involved in the judiciary.
And of course, the signers of the Declaration of Independence didn't see Negros, Indians, or women as being created equal to men. Because they obviously weren't real men. At least to them.
Good words wasted on ignorant people, in my opinion.
Some of the archetects of the constitution believed that women, negros and natives were equal but to ratify the document it had to pass a majority which were basically ignorant and culturalized into institutional prejudices. It was easy to convince the common colonial that he was equal to royalty, even that royalty didn't have divinity rights, but to convince them that minorities had rights was impossible at the time. Jefferson:http://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/thomas-jefferson-and-slavery
Many like Franklin, Jay, Madison were for equal rughts but not with imediate implimentation. Their collective greatest fear came true in the form of the civil war.
Ironically, Lincoln was a student of Jefferson and hastened the civil war with his campaign retoric. He also was for gradual abolition, but his election caused both sides to ramp up their efforts that led to war.
A further note: The fact that colonist didn't hold that natives were equal to the white colonist caused the American Revolution in the first place. Everyone in this nation was taught that taxation without representation ws the chief cause and it was a major factor, but the fact that George III honored a treaty with the Indian nations that limited the colonist from expanding west was just as important as taxes.
Quote from: "PickelledEggs"Since humans weren't "created", they evolved over time. What does it mean about the quote from the U.S.'s Declaration of Independence "all men were created equal"
Discuss.
Pretty sure it means that historical judgments should account for context, such as the state of knowledge at the time something is written.
Quote from: "PickelledEggs"Since humans weren't "created", they evolved over time. What does it mean about the quote from the U.S.'s Declaration of Independence "all men were created equal"
Discuss.
well jeepers, I think it means at the time the said that they thought humans were created. What part confuses you?
Quote from: "aitm"Quote from: "PickelledEggs"Since humans weren't "created", they evolved over time. What does it mean about the quote from the U.S.'s Declaration of Independence "all men were created equal"
Discuss.
well jeepers, I think it means at the time the said that they thought humans were created. What part confuses you?
lol
I wanted to focus more on the equality part. Sometimes I'm not the best at getting across things. :/
Disregard the creation vs evolution part.
How do you guys think the quote "all men were created equal" applies today? In different regions? With different groups of people?
mykcob4, you make some excellent points. And it still took until the 1960's to pass a civil rights act. But, as a society we are slowly evolving. Who knows, maybe in my grandkids time, assuming I have any, people will look past color, creed, sex, and national origins.
I've always had a problem with "All Men Were Created Equal" because it is so obviously wrong, to me anyway. I know it means all men should be treated as equal, but why didn't it just say that. Why does legal documents have to be so mysterious? LAWYERS! :roll: Solitary
If I recall, I think what they "really" meant was that all- free men who owned land- were created equal. If memory serves me, only they were allowed to vote. But its been a few beers over the top.
Quote from: "aitm"If I recall, I think what they "really" meant was that all- free men who owned land- were created equal. If memory serves me, only they were allowed to vote. But its been a few beers over the top.
This.
All they did was replace "royalty" with "landowner". Regardless of what they may have believed, what they did was nothing different than Britain; "does your family have money and clout? Okay, you have more rights than others and are "greater"."
I would say it was a step in the right direction, but I honestly don't believe that, considering Britain offered legal equality for minorities and women long before we did. At best the revolution was irrelevant to civil rights but I would argue the society that was developed post-revolution was actually more detrimental than equal rights than if the Americans had stayed under the crown.
Quote from: "aitm"If I recall, I think what they "really" meant was that all- free men who owned land- were created equal. If memory serves me, only they were allowed to vote. But its been a few beers over the top.
Actually I think they meant something similar to what was written by another famous individual:
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
Right. Equality based on land ownership and the rejection of a peerage. It certainly does not mean we are born with equal status or equal abilities.
The same people who wrote that all men are created equal also wrote that we're all born with the same rights to realize our opportunities. I don't think that "all men are created equal" meant anything more - to them - than that.
(The usual comments about "all" and "created" apply.)
Okay, there is a misconception about the Constitution.
1) No where in history before the Constitution were common men given any rights. That was a shocking inovation at the time and still is. Although there have been many types of government the common man has been excluded from the equation. Even in the birth place of democracy, ancient Greece, a common man was NOT a citizen, and only citizens had democratic rights. It took a long line of philosophers, atheist, and logical critical thinkers to come up with the concept that people beyond land ownership, beyond divine birthright, had rights.
The Constitution is the courageous concept enacted into the greatest experiment ever tried. It is a LIVING document, despite what the conservaturds would have you believe.
The architects of the Constitution, in particular the actual authors, John Jay, James Madison and a few others, knew full well what they were writing into law. They had to be clever because they were fighting prejudice, religiousity, tradition, cultural bias, ignorance, stupiity, AND that was just in their own congress. Beyond that they had to sell what they had devised to the people at large.
The problem of a successful revolution is that at the onset everyone is in it together to throw off oppression. By the time it ends the factions are in it for themselves.
To bind the new nation together the writers(not the signers) had to write into law a way, a path for their ultimate ideal to eventually become reality. The problem is that we sell short the original authors.
The "Charactor of the Law" is what it is called and it is a very hard definition of the law. The original document is set up to live and change not only in time to accomodate with the times, but to also eventually get to what the fathers intended.
No one at the time had a solution about slavery. Thomas Jefferson wanted to abolish slavery. People often point to Jefferson's attitude toward negros as confirmation that blacks aren't exactly equal. They leave out what Jefferson thought about common men. He considered them ignorant children as well that had to be led for their own good until they collective think on their own. Jefferson considered a slave on par with the common farm worker of the time.
The constitution was designed to accomodate for the eventuality that all men would acheive equality and despite the fact that they were not actual equals, they should have equal rights making a way for the opportunity to become intellectual peers.
The equal rights part of the constitution addresses the lie of divine right, divine rule. It dismisses birthright altogether. By doing so it allows for all beings to have equal rights under the law. Those rights go beyond "citizen" and extend to everyone to include foriegners and aliens. Example a foriegn national has the same rights as a citizen of the US. Under US law a foriegn national cannot be prosecuted any differently than a US citizen. This very fact is why we classify terrorist as military combatants, thus denying them constitutional protection.
Equality, equal rights is a statement about treatment, NOT creation. Solitary has it correct.
Drunkenshoe. You have a very limited view. the term "men" doesn't just mean male gender. Ask any credible English professor and they will soundly instruct you about the term.
Also "universal Sufferage" is a recognition term about prior and ongoing events in history. You can't just dismiss the fact that the U.S. Constitution addressed the difference of the rights of common man and the rights of divine authority, for that is exactly what did and does do. Also not understanding the phrase "all men are created equal" because YOU want to accept only a very literal definition doesn't really define the phrase at all.
Since the statement of "all men are created equal" is in the Declaration of Independence" and not in the U. S. Constitution. Defining what the constitution they way you have done makes no sense. We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.
O.K. , this is my first post on a topic, so go easy on me. But it seems to me that the question of what it meant to the writers is less important than what it means to us through our (hopefully) more enlightened viewpoint today. I would like to think that the authors meant ALL men AND women, but that just isn't realistic. I hope though that we, today, can see it as something we can reinterpret and use as a precept to write more humanistic laws. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness are certainly a good place to start.
Quote from: "Solomon Zorn"O.K. , this is my first post on a topic, so go easy on me. But it seems to me that the question of what it meant to the writers is less important than what it means to us through our (hopefully) more enlightened viewpoint today. I would like to think that the authors meant ALL men AND women, but that just isn't realistic. I hope though that we, today, can see it as something we can reinterpret and use as a precept to write more humanistic laws. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness are certainly a good place to start.
Of course you are correct. Despite semantics its the meaning NOW that is important.
It's generally a good thing to remind people that history is mostly filled with people acting like assholes to everyone, because it might inspire us to do better in the future.
It's like how people who say "I wish I could live in the middle ages" make me cringe. No you don't. You really don't. That's just your ignorance of just how shitty the middle ages were talking.
It's mostly the teaching part where it goes wrong. You need to explain to people the difference between a good story and what really happened. Fake stories about the romanticised middle ages are at least as entertaining as real stories about the middle ages, but they simply aren't real, and people shouldn't accept them as such.
But if you teach them to distuinguish fairy-tales from myth, they might stop believing in gawd, so it's best to be careful with that :roll:
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"... It's very important for children and obviously adults to be aware of what that statement really meant to writers or for people then. Historical perspective...
I agree with you on that. I wasn't advocating the rewriting of history, or ignoring what our founding fathers were really like. I despise coloring the past to suit your own ideology. I only meant that we need to be able to agree on some precepts underlying our laws today. Treating ALL as equal under the law is obviously a good starting point, and the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are an excellent foundation. Much better than the 10 commandments, for example (shudder). So from a practical standpoint isn't it beneficial to reinterpret their idea for our times? Not when teaching history, but for the purpose of consensus about what our priorities should be when framing new laws.
as long as no one tries to say that Abe Lincoln was NOT a vampire hunter.
Moody---so that's what you call it? #-o Solitary
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Quote from: "Plu"It's like how people who say "I wish I could live in the middle ages" make me cringe. No you don't. You really don't. That's just your ignorance of just how shitty the middle ages were talking.
If you promote fantasy shows with scantily clad young women obeying and serving strong, big muscled, powerful men clashing swords all they long as if they are a piece of history, while you culturally pump/hype up two narrow gender roles for male and female in every piece of visual 'thing' and teach about Middle Ages to children with an understanding of PC game Age of Empires, their ignorance becomes the new history and reality in time and you'll be a nutjob minority living in another world.
E: Check American movie web sites. You'll find 300 Spartans in history section.
Age of Empires helped my understanding of the middle ages as a kid:
-countless farmers doing back-breaking work all day for little to no reward only to be slaughtered by people on a whim
-slightly luckier people getting paid to be in some sort of army...until they get sent on futile campaigns and raids in distant lands dying in droves
-one fat king sitting in his castle hoarding all the gold
:lol:
Quote from: "Plu"It's mostly the teaching part where it goes wrong. You need to explain to people the difference between a good story and what really happened.
People who have been trained from birth to accept the Bible as fact will accept any nonsense as fact.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Quote from: "Solomon Zorn"O.K. , this is my first post on a topic, so go easy on me. But it seems to me that the question of what it meant to the writers is less important than what it means to us through our (hopefully) more enlightened viewpoint today. I would like to think that the authors meant ALL men AND women, but that just isn't realistic. I hope though that we, today, can see it as something we can reinterpret and use as a precept to write more humanistic laws. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness are certainly a good place to start.
Despite the common belief in the forum, I am not pushing this -or any other subject- just to annoy people.
It's very important for children and obviously adults to be aware of what that statement really meant to writers or for people then. Historical perspective. If you over interpret something like this in a politically correct way and convey it conveniently to present day in today's terms, you are teaching something wrong. And that is not something about semantics, that's something basic to their individual and collective identity.
American culture does this to almost every historical/political concept available/suitable. Sweeps the crucial nuances of the historical perspective of an event, the real cultural inheritence developed in time and turn it to some bright painted fast food menu and shove it down children's throats from every corner. AND Turns around and define its own people as STUPID, a nation of retarded people proud of their ignorance. THEN wonder why a very large group of American people have some fantastical, destructive understanding of 'freedom' or 'independence' and living in delusion. In short it creates a disoriented, delusional understanding of their own and its dangerous. You are suffering from this. Badly.
Declaration of Independence is probably the most important event in your history, the basic education you all receive, anything about it is etched into your brains since you're little kids. Would there be a civil war leading to that end if there wasn't a Declaration of Independence? What would happen to the historical process of abolishing slavery as we know it? How about the fight between the Republicans and Democrats today? Where do its roots lie? It's the freaking 'tabula rasa' of American identity for two opposite, clashing sides. Doesn't that tell you anything? You are responsible with teaching what this document really meant then to your own people in its own historical perspective with its good and ugly and bad; its development. This is what it means today; how you came to this point, that development. Not just some sort of a disoriented, glossed over interpretation of its most important statement carried as some 'conclusion' over all American times. Let me remind you that when that piece of paper was written and signed, non white people were slaves and now you have a black president elected for the second term.
Why act like as if it carried something more than it did? What value it would have today really, if it didn't inspire or become something more? None. Just 'oh look we kicked some empire ass 250 years ago!' which was an eventual thing to come under any circumstances. What a big deal. Suprise, history runs on empires oppressing nations and nations kicking back. That's the only game in town. Do you have anything more? That is the question.
If you had read exrensively anything that John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and James Madison had thought about the constitution, you would understand how they felt about equality.
Solitary is correct when he said that the intent of the authors of the constittution was to treat everyone equaly.
Hamilton was interested in the financial and economics of the new government. He felt that opportunity came from everyone having the same rights to make money. That included the negro. He was from the carribean after all and he knew full well that negros were the equal of every white man. Madison was the great legal mind of his era. He knew that he could write in a path for equality so he made that path happen despite many of the other congress men. John Jay wasan idealist that saw a time when all Americans would enjoy political and legal equality. These were the primary writers of the constitution. They fought to instill a path for total equality for all men AND women. They were fighting people that didn't understand their big picture vision of the new nation. Most congressmen at the time wanted a England type government that exckuded the king, a very short sighted view. So yes Drunkenshoe I find your interpretation shortsighted and limited. You are correct in describing the majority of the original founders, but they didn't get exactly what they intended or wanted, unbeknownced to them. Madison in particular was very clever in installing a path for total equality.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"So my interpretation is 'shortsighted' and 'limited', because I am evaluating a statement as it was written, signed and declared from the aspect of 53 men who are responsible from it, but not from the aspect of some other 3 who 'actually' felt something else in their hearts while signing it?
Sorry, mykcob. It looks like I was dead on, because what you are offering up there is a very disoriented vision of history, and what people felt; what they would have liked to see there according to your sentiments -or anyone else's- is not an interpretation. Nowhere near kinda not.
Don't apologize to me for you being wrong. I can't help that. Like I said if you had ever read those men exstensively maybe you'd know.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"So my interpretation is 'shortsighted' and 'limited', because I am evaluating a statement as it was written, signed and declared from the aspect of 53 men who are responsible from it, but not from the aspect of some other 3 who 'actually' felt something else in their hearts while signing it?
Sorry, mykcob. It looks like I was dead on, because what you are offering up there is a very disoriented vision of history, and what people felt; what they would have liked to see there according to your sentiments -or anyone else's- is not an interpretation. Nowhere near kinda not.
You... do realize that those men wrote other documents expressing their private thoughts, yes?
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"[spoil:27st1zw1]That a statement which was put into a nation's declaration of independence 250 years ago, before human rights bill, any official recognition or acceptance of universal human suffrage, women's suffrage, while slavery and every fucking atrocity went full throttle for almost 100 years after it was signed, ACTUALLY MEANT that time something more than it tells, BECAUSE 3 few good men among the 56 responsible for it actually DREAMT, FELT and THOUGHT and had better INTENTIONS about it.
Is this how you perceive historical events in your nation's past and their consequences in shaping your culture, becoming factors, naturally to develop into something else today? You are basically saying there wasn't any development, but what has been put from the beginning was what we claim to have now. This is against reality, not to mention basic rationality.
Come to think of it, this also explains a lot actually. Because this exactly sounds like a good starting point for a very unhealthy, delusional understanding of 'freedom' policy -be it domestic or international- being embraced by this culture as something real, possible and thriving, pushed by a brutal power of a totalitarian state, which finally became the American Empire that runs on corporate democracy. I mean think about the general culture from its most trivial point to the deepest old roots. One State directing 50 states as companies in an enormous corporation. Two opposite sides, one manual, no rules.
I bet these few good men are actually idealised not just because they're the heroic figures of the event, but probably what they expressed is actually the plain, straight, primitive version of the multilayered, pumped up bullshit going on now. And while evaluating this statement, you are turning it to something else needlessly to load some extra value in it, while the reality of that process also what they intended but had to sign MEANS much more in terms of any development made since then.
And my view is limited, because I don't have some taught idealisation of a few individual's intentions and feelings and refuse to interpret an official statement in this idealised way, but taking it literally. :-|[/spoil:27st1zw1]
You haven't responded to a single goddamn thing anyone said.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Quote from: "Hijiri Byakuren"You haven't responded to a single goddamn thing anyone said.
Really? Like what for example? "You are wrong." "Your view is limited, I know how they felt." "They didn't mean what they wrote, but what they felt which was greater than what they wrote." Give me a fucking break.
History of United Sates didn't get cut from human history, and its basic issues and started to exist on some other plane alone when the country got his independence.
Americans' understanding of their own history and any accomplishments or developments that came with it are so exaggerated, painted and blown out of proportion, the way past events, concepts and facts are defined reached some sort of heights where people now perceive them as equal to what they were identified with 250 years ago.
And talking about this with Americans is like talking to a brick wall, as it happens with other few subjects.
Ah yes, rather than respond to any real points, let's make up strawman versions of what people are saying and insult their entire country while we're at it. After all, everything you say is right and anything to the contrary is wrong, evidence be damned.
I don't feel the need to dignify anything you say with a proper response until you get off your bloody high horse. :roll:
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Ah... 'Insult' their entire country. :lol: Yes, I am posting various threads in the forum on various subjects, criticising everything that I think should be criticised. But when it comes to something you don't like, it suddenly becomes 'insult' from someone on a high horse in a thread, you haven't even made any contribution. Yeah this happens often. Almost with everyone. Interestingly enough people don't like when you question and poke what they hold dear and absolute. They only like that to be stroked and celebrated.
'Real points' and arguments made on intentions and feelings of a few individuals to interpret statements from a 250 years old historical document, because according to that it 'actually' means something else. Lovely.
Either grow up or please continue to not to feel the need to dignify anything I say with a proper response until you learn to question every single thing that has been defined as absolute truth. May be then you'll get who is on a high horse.
Thinking you're being an ass now means I disagree with you, apparently. You make an awful lot of assumptions about me considering how little I've said on the matter.
You also still haven't answered a single point anyone here has made, by the way.
Drunksy, I want to have your baby.
Quote from: "drunkenshoe"Apparently you just don't like what I said.
You just keep telling yourself that, bud. :roll:
Quote from: "Hijiri Byakuren"Ah yes, rather than respond to any real points, let's make up strawman versions of what people are saying and insult their entire country while we're at it. After all, everything you say is right and anything to the contrary is wrong, evidence be damned.
I don't feel the need to dignify anything you say with a proper response until you get off your bloody high horse. :roll:
can only americans insult america?
I see mykcob4 posting things only he knows because he's read some stuff about some guys on the constitution. I don't see anything that actually refutes drunkenshoe. seems to be alot of opinons and revisionist history going on to suit people's views.
I have a hard time believing the intent of the authors of the constituion was to treat everyone equally when there was slavery. It seems to take all the things they didn't like about living in england and getting rid of those and keeping the things they did like.
Quote from: "surly74"can only americans insult america?
[s:oilv7ain]Yes[/s:oilv7ain] No, but I don't appreciate being lumped into a group I don't necessarily agree with.