Likely prez candidate 2024 Tom Cotton: “Slavery was a necessary evil”

I'm still not entirely sure we'll have the November election, let alone future elections... especially when the current WH occupant has made more than one comment about how great it would be to have a "president for life." (And his heartthrob in Russia just completed a massive power grab that will keep him in office for a Very Long Time... plus his other authoritarian heroes sure don't seem in a hurry to hand over any reins any time soon...) This certainly taps right into the rabid, racist core of the WH occupant's base, though: both the cult-brainwashed rallygoers on the streets who worship the Confederacy and are convinced the Civil War is still theirs to win, and the ones in their mansions bankrolling this regime who already consider the rest of the world their disposable playthings.

Also makes me worried about what else will be justified as "necessary evil"... seems like literally nothing would be off the table if you just tack the arguable adjective "necessary" before it to justify what they clearly know is an evil act.

As the kids say, Yikes!

Who's gonna bet that if you look at his genealogy you don't have to go back very far to find slave owners?

It's not very many steps from "slavery was a necessary evil" to "slavery is a necessary good!"

After all, one of the reasons many people are out of work is that labor is so expensive people are being replaced by automation, right? So if you could find a way to make labor dirt cheap...

The Southern states were prepared to walk out of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 if the new constitution outlawed slavery. If that had happened, there would have been 2 new nations instead of one. Slavery would have continued in the South and, without the Civil War, probably continued for many decades longer than it did.
Separate nations would certainly have been weaker than a single nation. England and Spain would likely have returned to reclaim/expand their territory on North America. Would they put a stop to slavery? I don't know, but that slavery was common in many places around the world.

History isn't always nice - but it is what it is. Hopefully we pay attention and learn from it.
I highly recommend the book Tempest at Dawn by James Best - it recounts the events at the Constitutional Convention.
Please do not misunderstand me and claim I am trying to justify slavery. Understanding history helps us understand why and where we are today.

Roxxsmom said:

It's not very many steps from "slavery was a necessary evil" to "slavery is a necessary good!"

After all, one of the reasons many people are out of work is that labor is so expensive people are being replaced by automation, right? So if you could find a way to make labor dirt cheap...

Click to expand...

Isn't this basically where the for-profit prison/prison labor thing is headed?

Gregg said:

The Southern states were prepared to walk out of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 if the new constitution outlawed slavery. If that had happened, there would have been 2 new nations instead of one. Slavery would have continued in the South and, without the Civil War, probably continued for many decades longer than it did.
Separate nations would certainly have been weaker than a single nation. England and Spain would likely have returned to reclaim/expand their territory on North America. Would they put a stop to slavery? I don't know, but that slavery was common in many places around the world.

History isn't always nice - but it is what it is. Hopefully we pay attention and learn from it.
I highly recommend the book Tempest at Dawn by James Best - it recounts the events at the Constitutional Convention.
Please do not misunderstand me and claim I am trying to justify slavery. Understanding history helps us understand why and where we are today.

Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure we all know that history contains many evils, and we all know why slavery was allowed to continue as long as it did. Interestingly enough, the whole educational movement Tom Cotton is against is about exposing that evil and the series of choices that led to the founding fathers insisting on its necessity, starting from when the first slaves were dragged ashore here.

Calling an evil necessary doesn't make it good. What ever happened to those conservatives who insist evils are never necessary, and the ends never justify the means? Should we shy away from the discomfort caused by admitting that the good things many of us have today came at a horrific, and ultimately unjustifiable, human cost that is still being exacted?

The choice made by our founders ultimately caused the bloodiest war in US history. And before (and long after) that war, slavery caused the deaths and the unspeakable suffering of countless African-American people. After it officially ended, the scourge did not disappear, and all Americans, but especially those of African descent, are paying the price for this evil today. Do we live in the best of all possible worlds that could have arisen? Was it ultimately worth the price it has exacted on our country? Is the answer different depending on who you are, on the color of your skin? Did slavery lay foundations for our country that are so unstable the US will eventually tear itself apart anyway?

That choice to embrace slavery as a necessary evil stemmed from a premise: that Black lives are lesser, that they were justifiably, necessarily, sacrificed at the alter of our country, and that this sacrifice was worth it. This thinking is still with us today. And conservatives wonder why we have a Black Lives Matter movement? Why Black people are angry? It makes me want to vomit, and I'm not black.

I'll counter with a different book every white person should read. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson.

Personally, I think we could have, should have, done better than to build and grow our nation on a foundation of evil, however necessary it may have seemed at the time.