Finally, I’m not convinced that praise of effective leaders like Washington, Madison, and Churchill is neglected in at least American public education and discourse (but this may have changed since my childhood).
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I don’t like “neglectedness” being applied in this context. MLK jr, for example, is certainly not “neglected” of praise, but I think his writings and methods still have a lot to teach us.
I’d say a better argument against washington is that he was a slaveowner and did not stop the spread of slavery when he had the power to do so. I’m not sure “turn a blind eye to the great evils of your day” is a great lesson to be learned.
Fair—I took Arturo’s take to be that there was an undersupply of praise of people high in effectiveness relative to praise of people high in altruism, such that we should do more of the former. To me, the amount of “airtime” Washington et al. get is evidence against that take.
Lincoln was always a very ruthless political operative, but we praise him because in the 1860s the direction of History was mostly “end slavery”.
In the 1770s, the frontier was “no taxation without representation”, and turning a blind eye to slavery was almost inevitable, specially if your political base was from Virginia.
Progress is about concentrating the social force in the place where it can lead to change.
That implies turning a blind eye to anything else.
I’d probably give somewhat more credence to this if Washington didn’t own 124 slaves at the time of his death. People in Virginia were emanicipating their slaves; Washington could have but did not during his lifetime. That suggests his actions were not merely constrained by what was possible for a politician to accomplish at the time.
And to imagine Benjamin Lay was raging against slavery in Pennsylvania 150 years before the Corwin Amendment… I agree Lincoln’s reputation is too strong, although he did actually achieve what was needed for abolition.
Oh, sure. Both Washington and Lincoln were more interested in the United States than in slavery. This show that their priority was political instead of ethical. And they were magnificently right, because the United States is to some extent “a machinery of freedom”, an institutional system with the right bias, and that is more important than some material injustice here and now.
More over, I am not defending the ethical superiority of my chosen “saints”; I simply suggest that purity of intention is not the most important valuation criterium. I am simply taking a consequentialist reading of History.
More important than the point of Washington personally owning slaves, the US was two generations behind the UK in banning slavery. A counterfactual where the US didn’t leave Britain (or seceded peacefully later on in a manner similar to Canada, Australia, etc) likely means emancipation of slaves much earlier. So at least contemporaneously the “machinery of freedom” argument is implausible; you’d basically need the World Wars/maybe the Cold War before the argument becomes plausible.
Would UK have banned slavery if the US where still a British colony? Moreover, with a large un represented colonial empire of people of English descent, would the UK keep its parliamentarian path? Many British Whig took a pro colonial position for some reason…
The US was clearly not a “machinery of freedom” before 1865, given that slavery was legal. So if it ever became a machinery of freedom (I struggle to think of when that would be), it was a hundred years after washingtons presidency, and I hesitate to give him credit for it.
I strongly disagree that Lincoln was correct to prioritize the union over ending slavery (though remember that this was when he was facing a risk of a massive war, a war which when it did break out killed hundreds of thousands). For one thing he probably wasn’t doing that to preserve “freedom” in some universalist sense after cost benefit analysis, but rather because he valued US nationalism over Black lives. But I still think this is a little simplistic. In the late 18th century, many, probably most countries and cultures in the world either had slavery internally, or used slavery as part of a colonial Empire. For example, slavery was widepsread in Africa internally, many European countries had empires that used slave labour, Arabs had a large slave trade in East Africa, the Mughals sold slaves from India, and if you pick up the great 18th century Chinese novel The Story of the Stone, you’ll find many characters are slaves. Meanwhile, the founding ideals of the US were unusually liberal and egalitarian relative to the vast majority of places at the time, and this probably did effect the internal experience of the average US citizen. The US reached a relatively expanded franchise with many working class male citizens able to vote far before almost anywhere else. So the US was not exceptional in its support for slavery or colonialist expansion (against Native Americans), but it was exceptional in its levels of internal (relative) liberal democracy. I think its plausible that on net the existence of the US therefore advanced the cause of “freedom” in some sense. Moving forward, it seems plausible that overall having the world’s largest and most powerful country be a liberal democracy has plausibly advanced the cause of liberal democracy overall, and the US is primarily responsible for the fact that German and Japan, two other major powers, are liberal democracies. Against that, you can point to the fact that the US has certainly supported dictatorship when it’s suited it, or when it’s been in the private interests of US businesses (particularly egregiously in Guatemala was genuinely genocidal results*). But there are also plenty places where the US really has supported democracy (i.e. in the former socialist states of Eastern Europe), so I don’t think this overcomes the prior that having the world’s most powerful and one of its richest nations, with the dominant popular culture, be a liberal democracy was good for freedom overall. Washington and the other revolutionaries plausibly bear a fair amount of responsibility for this. And in particular, Washington’s decision to leave power willingly, when he probably could have carried on being re-elected as a war hero until he died probably did a lot to consolidate democracy (such as it was) at the time. Of course, those founders who DID oppose slavery are much more unambiguously admirable.
I’m mainly taking issue with the “machinery of freedom” claim and the idea that the US is uniquely free. I would say the US is more free than average, but it’s hardly exceptional.
The US gave women the right to vote in 1919, whereas Australia had it since 1902, the UK had it in 1918, etc. And of course, there wasn’t universal right to vote until the civil rights movement.
Looking further back, while slavery was widespread, many other countries were much better than the US on this issue: the uk (no saint) banned it in 1807, over half a century before the US went to war with itself over the issue.
I’m happy to credit washington with support of democracy, but this idolisation just seems a little weird to me.
Compared to what? How many countries had a more extensive political participation? Of course, slavery was an abyssal horror, but it was almost universally accepted until 1807.
Until that date America was the most democratic country in the world, and regarding slavery was not worse than others (in fact, half of America always resisted slavery, finally at an enormous cost).
As Tocqueville understood, democracy is auto catalytic. When you begin with a 3% franchise in 1688, the slope towards 100% is in place. By importing the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution both put the process in motion in a continental size nation and perhaps avoided involution in UK
Compared to what? How many countries had a more extensive political participation? Of course, slavery was an abyssal horror, but it was almost universally accepted until 1807.
Until that date America was the most democratic country in the world
So from 1787 to 1807?
Except that the french revolution happened during this same period, and Robespierre abolished slavery in french colonies in 1792. Of course, napoleon reestablished it in 1802, so we can say that america was the most democratic country from 1787-1792 and then from 1802-1807. Hardly a great case for the machinery of freedom.
Is there any more representative country in the world between 1789 and let’s put the Civil War in 1864? Well, for sure Switzerland, but what else? Tocqueville opinion was that the US was not only formally, but also materially the most democratic among the world powers. I do not see many reason to doubt his observations.
I agree with the rest of your comment, but I don’t like “neglectedness” being applied in this context. MLK jr, for example, is certainly not “neglected” of praise, but I think his writings and methods still have a lot to teach us.
I’d say a better argument against washington is that he was a slaveowner and did not stop the spread of slavery when he had the power to do so. I’m not sure “turn a blind eye to the great evils of your day” is a great lesson to be learned.
Fair—I took Arturo’s take to be that there was an undersupply of praise of people high in effectiveness relative to praise of people high in altruism, such that we should do more of the former. To me, the amount of “airtime” Washington et al. get is evidence against that take.
Lincoln was always a very ruthless political operative, but we praise him because in the 1860s the direction of History was mostly “end slavery”.
In the 1770s, the frontier was “no taxation without representation”, and turning a blind eye to slavery was almost inevitable, specially if your political base was from Virginia.
Progress is about concentrating the social force in the place where it can lead to change.
That implies turning a blind eye to anything else.
I’d probably give somewhat more credence to this if Washington didn’t own 124 slaves at the time of his death. People in Virginia were emanicipating their slaves; Washington could have but did not during his lifetime. That suggests his actions were not merely constrained by what was possible for a politician to accomplish at the time.
Lincoln was pretty willing to enshrine slavery into the Constitution forever to save the Union (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment), so I find his anti-slavery reputation to be too strong.
And to imagine Benjamin Lay was raging against slavery in Pennsylvania 150 years before the Corwin Amendment… I agree Lincoln’s reputation is too strong, although he did actually achieve what was needed for abolition.
Oh, sure. Both Washington and Lincoln were more interested in the United States than in slavery. This show that their priority was political instead of ethical. And they were magnificently right, because the United States is to some extent “a machinery of freedom”, an institutional system with the right bias, and that is more important than some material injustice here and now.
More over, I am not defending the ethical superiority of my chosen “saints”; I simply suggest that purity of intention is not the most important valuation criterium. I am simply taking a consequentialist reading of History.
More important than the point of Washington personally owning slaves, the US was two generations behind the UK in banning slavery. A counterfactual where the US didn’t leave Britain (or seceded peacefully later on in a manner similar to Canada, Australia, etc) likely means emancipation of slaves much earlier. So at least contemporaneously the “machinery of freedom” argument is implausible; you’d basically need the World Wars/maybe the Cold War before the argument becomes plausible.
Would UK have banned slavery if the US where still a British colony? Moreover, with a large un represented colonial empire of people of English descent, would the UK keep its parliamentarian path? Many British Whig took a pro colonial position for some reason…
The US was clearly not a “machinery of freedom” before 1865, given that slavery was legal. So if it ever became a machinery of freedom (I struggle to think of when that would be), it was a hundred years after washingtons presidency, and I hesitate to give him credit for it.
I strongly disagree that Lincoln was correct to prioritize the union over ending slavery (though remember that this was when he was facing a risk of a massive war, a war which when it did break out killed hundreds of thousands). For one thing he probably wasn’t doing that to preserve “freedom” in some universalist sense after cost benefit analysis, but rather because he valued US nationalism over Black lives. But I still think this is a little simplistic. In the late 18th century, many, probably most countries and cultures in the world either had slavery internally, or used slavery as part of a colonial Empire. For example, slavery was widepsread in Africa internally, many European countries had empires that used slave labour, Arabs had a large slave trade in East Africa, the Mughals sold slaves from India, and if you pick up the great 18th century Chinese novel The Story of the Stone, you’ll find many characters are slaves. Meanwhile, the founding ideals of the US were unusually liberal and egalitarian relative to the vast majority of places at the time, and this probably did effect the internal experience of the average US citizen. The US reached a relatively expanded franchise with many working class male citizens able to vote far before almost anywhere else. So the US was not exceptional in its support for slavery or colonialist expansion (against Native Americans), but it was exceptional in its levels of internal (relative) liberal democracy. I think its plausible that on net the existence of the US therefore advanced the cause of “freedom” in some sense. Moving forward, it seems plausible that overall having the world’s largest and most powerful country be a liberal democracy has plausibly advanced the cause of liberal democracy overall, and the US is primarily responsible for the fact that German and Japan, two other major powers, are liberal democracies. Against that, you can point to the fact that the US has certainly supported dictatorship when it’s suited it, or when it’s been in the private interests of US businesses (particularly egregiously in Guatemala was genuinely genocidal results*). But there are also plenty places where the US really has supported democracy (i.e. in the former socialist states of Eastern Europe), so I don’t think this overcomes the prior that having the world’s most powerful and one of its richest nations, with the dominant popular culture, be a liberal democracy was good for freedom overall. Washington and the other revolutionaries plausibly bear a fair amount of responsibility for this. And in particular, Washington’s decision to leave power willingly, when he probably could have carried on being re-elected as a war hero until he died probably did a lot to consolidate democracy (such as it was) at the time. Of course, those founders who DID oppose slavery are much more unambiguously admirable.
*More people should know about this, it was genuinely hideously evil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_genocide
I’m mainly taking issue with the “machinery of freedom” claim and the idea that the US is uniquely free. I would say the US is more free than average, but it’s hardly exceptional.
The US gave women the right to vote in 1919, whereas Australia had it since 1902, the UK had it in 1918, etc. And of course, there wasn’t universal right to vote until the civil rights movement.
Looking further back, while slavery was widespread, many other countries were much better than the US on this issue: the uk (no saint) banned it in 1807, over half a century before the US went to war with itself over the issue.
I’m happy to credit washington with support of democracy, but this idolisation just seems a little weird to me.
Compared to what? How many countries had a more extensive political participation? Of course, slavery was an abyssal horror, but it was almost universally accepted until 1807.
Until that date America was the most democratic country in the world, and regarding slavery was not worse than others (in fact, half of America always resisted slavery, finally at an enormous cost).
As Tocqueville understood, democracy is auto catalytic. When you begin with a 3% franchise in 1688, the slope towards 100% is in place. By importing the Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution both put the process in motion in a continental size nation and perhaps avoided involution in UK
So from 1787 to 1807?
Except that the french revolution happened during this same period, and Robespierre abolished slavery in french colonies in 1792. Of course, napoleon reestablished it in 1802, so we can say that america was the most democratic country from 1787-1792 and then from 1802-1807. Hardly a great case for the machinery of freedom.
Is there any more representative country in the world between 1789 and let’s put the Civil War in 1864? Well, for sure Switzerland, but what else? Tocqueville opinion was that the US was not only formally, but also materially the most democratic among the world powers. I do not see many reason to doubt his observations.