Frederick Douglass: What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?

Vile woman and that smug twat fromage lapping it up next to her. She was defending this last night but of course it’s indefensible, just shameful. Oxygen thieves, the pair of them.

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I would guess he would, but would lean more libertarian. He seemed to have a Thomas Sowell type mindset.

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nailed

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That was last year. Haven’t heard any complaints over this years reading. Yet.

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You really think he’d support the party that has so fully embraced white supremacy? The party that supports various kinds of segregationist policies, such as extreme gerrymandering, and voter suppression? Both parties have recently supported the new jim crow in terms of hardline crime bills, but the democratic party is starting to move away from that, the GOP is not. On top of that, the current Trumpian GOP is just fine with brown children in cages, so I doubt that Douglass would support that at all.

What makes you think that? Libertarians (as a political party today, so big L) tend to be willing to embrace segregation as fine, as long as it’s not enforced by the state.

In what way? What from this speech leads you believe he’d embrace supply side economic theory?

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You’re assuming that there is more white supremacy leanings in the Republican party in 2019 than there was in 1850? I would have assumed the opposite and by a huge margin. He loved Lincoln and he was a guy saying that the physical differences between whites and negro would be destined to separate them.

And voter suppression? I don’t think that he’d abandon the party that actually gave African Americans freedom, citizenship, and the ability to vote in the first place. 13th amendment was passed with 2 aye votes from the Dem party and the 14th and 15th amendments were passed with zero support at all. My point here is that there was a tremendous amount of goodwill that was built up in his lifetime with the party.

“I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

“Gentleman, I am a republican, a radical republican, a Black republican, a republican dyed in the wool, and for one I want the republican party to live as long as I do… It is the party of law and order, of liberty and progress, of honor and honesty, as against disloyalty, moral stagnation, dishonest voting, and repudiation.”

“It is not true that the Republican party has not endeavored to protect the negro in his right to vote. The whole moral power of the party has been, from first to last, on the side of justice to the negro; and it has only been baffled, in its efforts to protect the negro in his vote, by the Democratic party.”

“The Republican party is not perfect; it is cautious even to the point of timidity; but it is the best friend we have.”

“I recognize the Republican party as the sheet anchor of the colored man’s political hopes and the ark of his safety.”

“There is no race problem before the country, but only a political one, the question whether a Republican has any right to exist south of Mason and Dixon’s line.”

This guy seemed like a real die hard with deeply thought out positions… not a swing voter. He was also pretty pissed at the time that jobs that could have gone to American blacks were being taken by a constant flood of new immigrants. So, he had a similar view to what the Trump base voter currently has.

Would such an intelligent person make such decisions based upon 169 year old information and circumstances?

You think too little of him.

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But… but… the KKK were Democrats!

But… but… National Socialist Democratic Workers Party!

:roll_eyes:

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Well - obviously. And the German Democratic Republik was a democracy.

Don’t get me started on Lady Fingers - gross!

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Heavens, you’re doubting that if Douglass really were alive today (as Trump has actually and idiotically indicated he is), he wouldn’t be a Trumpkin?!

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Edit: this one seems more on point.

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Of a different kind, I’d argue. The republican party was a coalition of pro-free soilers (people who supported free, white argicultural labor/land ownership) and various abolitionists (from the practical to the radical, including freedmen and women). Today’s GOP has a large number of out and out white supremacists and white nationalists.

The GOP abandoned black voters a long time ago. See their absorption of the dixiecrats in the late 40s, the Nixonian southern strategy, Reagan’s coded racist language (welfare queens), and the rise of Trumpian populism, which is openly in league with white supremacists.

The reality is that the party is NOT the same party, even if it still claims to embrace entrepreneurial.

Douglass was also not stupid. He’s no Herman Cain, or even a Michael Steele or Booker T. Washington. On the issue of race, he was a barn burning radical. Abolitionists were considered the most radical political force in American and possibly global politics (though they competed with early socialists). They wanted nothing more than the complete economic overturn of the American economy, in many cases, by even violent means.

You really need to put these into their historical context. I don’t believe that if he was resurrected today, he’d look at the GOP and see the same party of the 19th century, because they are not that at all.

His die hard view wasn’t with party, it was with his race. He was a race man, through and through. All he did was to free his people. If during the 1850s, the democratic party all of a sudden denounced slavery, he would have switched parties in a heartbeat. He was a radical republican LITERALLY BECAUSE THEY OPPOSED SLAVERY.

The same base that thinks slavery wasn’t so bad, that brown children sleeping on a concrete floor is just, and that Muslims are all enemies of the state? You really need to put Douglass into context, as well as the nature of the GOP in the 1850s vs. 2019.

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The world would be a much better place if facts could actually rebut talking points. I long for such a world, but it is not this world. (Insert dramatic LoTR soundtrack here.)

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Calling him a race man gives him way too little credit as an intellectual. He had strong positions on a wide variety of topics. But perhaps the one that he stressed the most was his philosophy on the self made man. He had a very strong opinion that hard work and motivation was the key to success, even over luck and opportunity. It was sort of a sink or swim, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality.

“Give the negro fair play and let him alone. If he lives, well. If he dies, equally well. If he cannot stand up, let him fall down.”

And he believed that giving assistance in that regard or having a head start was counterproductive and would lead to softness.
“As a general rule, where circumstances do most for men there man will do least for himself; and where man does least, he himself is least. His doing makes or unmakes him.”

This is why I think that in modern times, he would be one of those voices in the black community that would be preaching self reliance and grit and pushing back against the welfare state.

It’s all conjecture of course, but his writings and the transcripts of his speeches really paint a picture of an incredibly old-school conservative to me. I would hate to be the one to have to explain the modern day tax code to him after he got off the time machine.

“ Established in 1869, the National Labor Union, more commonly known as the Colored National Labor Union ( CNLU ), was formed by African Americans to organize their labor collectively on a national level. The CNLU, like other labor unions in the United States, was created with the goal of improving the working conditions and quality of life for its members.”

Frederick Douglass was President of this Union.

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Nonetheless, his essay makes a valid and cogent point. Even the broken clock that’s right twice a day still is correct on those two moments.

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That’s what happens when iconic figures who made history get co-opted.

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More context-free quotes. I would think you conservatives would have more sympathy with migrant workers, given all the cherry-picking you do.

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I have a god-family who never fail to bring up MLK Jr’s marital issues when discussing issues of racism. :man_shrugging:

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