Here’s my hypothesis about people who use slavery to trash the Founders: They have contempt for our constitutional guarantees of liberty. Slavery is merely a convenient moral posturing tool as they try to reduce respect for our Constitution.
Well, I don’t regard slavery as “merely a convenient moral posturing tool,” but yes, I do have contempt for the Constitution’s so-called guarantees of liberty, and I am certainly out to try to reduce respect for that statist and statism-enabling document. So yes, he’s essentially right about people like me.
I doubt it’s you specifically he had in mind. Since George Washington et al. are most frequently associated with their founding of this country, it’s not a big leap to connect denigrating Washington personally with denigrating the USA. He probably had people in mind who don’t really think slavery is super bad in general but single Washington and Jefferson out for excoriation over practicing slavery (and not, say, of the other 13 US pre-Lincoln presidents), which does seem biased to me.
http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps.htm
Roderick, what’s your opinion of Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell generally? Do they fit your criteria for “right-conflationists” or not?
Yes, they both seem to me to be right-conflationists much of the time.
I’ve previously grumped about Williams here, here, and here, and Sowell here.
See also Kevin Carson on Sowell here.
That argument follows close to what the Roundheads of 1649 said to Levellers who demanded universal suffrage (for men only, but still)-“those who have an interest in the country should govern” (from the film Winstanley http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073911/). As if the common people didn’t have an “interest” as well…I highly recommend Winstanley, by the way.
I thought the original right-conflationist mold was cast from Sowell.
I have a hypothesis about Sowell. If he ever comes up with a column that couldn’t have been pasted together from Heritage Foundation talking points, his syndicate will call in an exorcist.
Thanks for the link to that C4SS column, by the way. You can tell it was written back before Tom Knapp started actually getting newspapers to print our stuff, because the word “turd” is in it.
Sowell is pretty horrible on issues of war.