It is anything but a "small group"! Liberal, Left, Socialist, Communist Democrats and funded by some of the wealthiest pukes in this world. No one is satisfied being #2.

This has nothing to do with "feathers". Someone is routinely 'downvoting' all my posts here and all of Peter Smith's posts. It started up again on this thread when Blarman showed up.

That and maybe a lot of people, that have associated with the party of slavery feel really guilty and now pointing a waving finger at the rest of us that never associated with that party or slavery for that matter.

you pointed out an error and I fixed it...simple as that.

Dennis Prager's "fireside" belief that "people have to invent things to be mad about when they no longer exist" is not relevant to the topic or much of anything else. Neither are superficial observations attributed as causes, let alone racial class comparisons of what is claimed to have been "better" than "whites" and "other ethnic groups" at the end of WWII.

The clause that was removed was anti-slave trade, not alleged inferiority of blacks, which is irrelevant to the reasoning given in the anti-slave trade clause. What people at the time thought of alleged inferiority of blacks has nothing to do with their need for unanimous support for the Declaration. Many of them knew that alleged inferiority does not justify slavery. I am not "arguing with them". We all know what some common views were on the nature of blacks and do not need to be instructed.

We are more than 150 years past the end of the Civil War and the enactment of the 13th and 14th Amendments. That's approximately five generations, meaning that only the grandparents of today's grandparents would have heard about it from first-hand sources. So why are the stories being brought up today? Dennis Prager today spoke to such in his fireside chat and suggested that it was because people have to invent things to be mad about when they no longer exist. People are looking for excuses to avoid taking responsibility for their own lives. Black culture has unfortunately embraced the mantra of the new slave state: dependence on the Democratic welfare state, thuggishness, and fatherlessness. Those three have destroyed a culture that until the end of WW II was on par - or better - with whites and other ethnic groups in social measures.

"Alleged inferiority does not justify slavery and many of the founders knew that."

You're arguing with them, not me. Ultimately it was the desire for the perpetuation of slavery in South Carolina and Georgia which caused that clause to be omitted from the final draft of the Declaration of Independence. The moral arguments for perpetuating slavery are well documented from speeches of the time. I'm simply repeating them - not justifying them.

After my response Olduglycarl edited his post from "it's the 1922 version" to "it's the one talked about in a book by C Becker, published in 1922". Beck did not say anything about the Becker history, which was first mentioned on this thread here https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

Who is the cowardly troll who 'downvotes' these posts with no attempt at rebuttal? It just started here again when a forum religion promoter showed up to lecture at us.

Let's not get into a down voting frenzy. Just ignore comments that russel your feathers...

Who is the cowardly hit and run troll who 'downvotes' documented history that conflicts with religious belief? This is supposed to be an Ayn Rand forum for rational discussion.

Yes, but post modernist (anti enlightenment) have no ears to hear nor eyes to read lips of those that wish to point out the facts.

Who would have thunk that after a long road of discovering proper rights and wrongs we'd see a de-evolution propagated by a small group) into an improper, pagan barbarian view of rights and wrongs...this is where we are at now.

There is no 1922 version of The Declaration. Which draft are you referring to and how do you know which one Beck was using? More than one draft contained the anti-slave trade clause.

Alleged inferiority does not justify slavery and many of the founders knew that. Alleged inferiority was not the reason why the anti-slave trade clause was removed, which was to ensure unanimity in the break with Britain.

Just added: 4 picts of: 1, a version Beck talks about, it's the one talked about in a book by C Becker, published in 1922. 2, the fraqment found in a picture frame, (1947) thought to be part of the very first draft. 3 a transcript of that draft and 4, just for ha ha's, a right side up copy of the upside down version found in 1947.

Do not insinuate that Peter did not "actually" watch the Beck video. For all of Beck's emphasis on Christianity he did not mention the lack of any appeal to it, or even mention of it, in the drafts other than the pejorative against the King's religion in the anti-slave trade clause that was removed.

The declaration in any form is a true testament to where we are today. Put 13 individuals in any room discussing any subject and it will be near impossible to get a unanimous consensus. More important to all of this is this question, Since when has it become acceptable to convict anyone for the sins of their fathers? Here in the USA there is not a single living slave and doubtful there is any individual alive today who was born into an enslaved family. Under a very different color we are all slaves to the government we elect and not at all far differents from the British we fought to separate this country from.

Yes, because the popular theory of the time regarding blacks was that they were not people of the same type as Caucasians. John C. Calhoun was a strong proponent of this theory as were many Southerners seeking to provide a moral basis for their "peculiar institution." Another popular theory was that whites had a paternalistic responsibility to care for the less intellectual blacks and that they could best do that through servitude.

If you actually listen to the video, Beck does mention it very specifically by pointing out that Jefferson was calling into question King George's bona fides as a Christian with that use. Jefferson could only do that if he knew very well what the standard of Christianity was to begin with and that King George wasn't complying with it. That it mattered to Jefferson to such a degree that he would include that in a proposal for a public document of this import speaks heavily to Jefferson's feelings about slavery and the hypocrisy of supposed Christians of his day who supported it - and possibly even Christianity itself. Though Jefferson was not associated with the religious sects of that day is well known, but it is clear from his commented version of the Bible that he was well versed with its principles (pun intended).

The positive side of that is in the chapter of Becker's history, "The Natural Rights Philosophy", describing the Enlightenment philosophy of reason as the basis of Jefferson's Declaration. This was widely accepted in place of the older notions of religious miracles, mysticism and an anthropomorphized notion of a god that had previously dominated.

"[T]he strength of the Declaration was precisely that it said what everyone was thinking. Nothing could have been more futile than an attempt to justify a revolution on principles which no one had ever heard of before...

"The truth is that Locke, and the English Whigs, and Jefferson and Rousseau even more so, had lost that sense of intimate intercourse and familiar conversation with God which religious men of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries enjoyed. Since the later seventeenth century, God had been withdrawing from immediate contact with men, and had become, in proportion as he receded into the dim distance, no more than the Final Cause, or Great Contriver, or Prime Mover of the universe; and as such was conceived as exerting his power and revealing his will indirectly through his creation rather than directly by miraculous manifestation or through inspired books. In the eighteenth century as never before, ‘Nature’ had stepped in between man and God; so that there was no longer any way to know God’s will except by discovering the ‘laws’ of Nature, which would doubtless be the laws of ‘nature’s god’ as Jefferson said."

(And needless to say, there was no mention anywhere of the religious notion that "All fetuses are created equal, that their souls are endowed by God with certain inalienable rights to be born.")

The most interesting part is not re slavery, but the lack of any mention of religion in previous drafts, including this one.
The only mention of Christianity is as a pejorative.
Funny that Beck doesn't mention that.

-- The drafts of The Declaration in Becker's 1922 book had not been just discovered, although one of them had just been noticed that year in government archives and moved to the Library of Congress.

You can read the 1922 edition at https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/be... but it doesn't have the "modern" 1942 introduction.

-- In the 18th century common use of capitalization was much different than today. The little booklet (3 1/2'' x 5" with maroon cover) that Cato has been distributing for decades with The Declaration and The Constitution has modern, readable type preserving original grammar: you can see in there capitalization of words, sometimes entire words, in the middle of sentences throughout The Declaration.

Glenn Beck is not a reliable source. His video presentation was filled with goofy asides and he gave no sources for assertions he used in his commentary, which is not the 'silver bullet' he thinks it is. Understanding the political history of The Declaration is important, but does by itself "change absolutely everything" against the race mongering left. (I eventually got the facebook url for the video to work through a vpn on another computer; facebook does not like browsers it can't track.)

-- The concept "race" is more general than skin color but does not include "parasitism". The concept "racism" means "the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors." [Ayn Rand http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/rac...]

No one is born with an ingrained life-long character of "parasitism", which has nothing to do with "race" or any kind of genetic inheritance. "Like every form of determinism, racism invalidates the specific attribute which distinguishes man from all other living species: his rational faculty. Racism negates two aspects of man’s life: reason and choice, or mind and morality, replacing them with chemical predestination." [Ayn Rand]

Also, I think, the other point Glenn made in the video I saw was Jefferson Capitalized and underlined Men and Christianity in his draft.
Now, I don't know about the other drafts in 1922, haven't had the chance to check it out. But in the long view, the important thing is that he brought up slavery in his drafts, found in 1922 and 1947.

Glenn didn't go into why he thought the capitalization's made a difference in today's discussions.
Frankly, it makes no nevermind in the left's view of their own racism and their own guilt.

Personally, I look upon the concept of Race as going way beyond something so insignificant as skin color, regardless of how it is defined.
Parasitical Humanoids comes to mind in that regard. LMAO.

In the 70's a lot of people "got it". Those are the ones now supporting Trump. It's the educated but clueless morons who claim that Hamilton and rap are praiseworthy that are the impediment to liberty now.