Frederick Douglass - Poetic Justice Warrior or Social Justice Warrior?
Poetic justice is a spontaneous consequence of nature. It is peaceful and patient. Social justice is capricious and requires force. Poetic justice warriors apply reason to reality. Social justice warriors demand immediate satisfaction.
But the Average American doesn't even know him, and the few black people I ask about him, SHUN him because they were told he was a bad conservative, and a traitor to the cause.
The brainwashing runs deep.
Frederick Douglass loved the US Constitution for its clarity and inspiration. He understood the "three fifths" rule as a means to curb the power of slave states, which seems to escape comprehension in the eyes of the social justice types. The disdain for Douglass is actually based on a more crass basis than any ideological slant. He was married to a white woman, and unlike today, where mixed coupling is not as important, the social justice thugs believe that Douglass' marriage was just a sign he had sold out to white power.
That compromise and the "Great Compromise" that led to the Constitution's branched government are probably the least understood (or known, though the fact that we had a rather different government before the constitution is even less known) aspects of our governmental history. Indeed I had a discussion with a "kill the electoral college" guy recently who actually believed the "over representation" in the Senate and EC was to get the "small states" board because they were the slavery states. Talk about being as wrong as you can be on something!
What many fail to realize is that there were abolitionists in the slave states, and even slave owners who recognized holding people in chattel was wrong. Some people feared a slave uprising (especially after the Haitian revolution in 1791), while others worried about the slaves' welfare if released on their own.
What was sad and ironic was the lost opportunity to end slavery peacefully in the last 20 years before the Civil war. Slave owners were open to an end to the institution, provided they were financially compensated for the loss of their human property, but Congress balked at the cost. Too bad they didn't have the foresight as to how little that would have been compared to the terrible price of the conflict to follow.
As we have learned, it's not about proven bad behavior, otherwise it would be them in the stockade on the community square.
To them, this social vengeance is the virtuous cause of social altruism.
To accomplish that, one needs patients with self and forgiveness for his own mistakes.
The fact that ten years later President Obama's critics are still taking a line from a speech out of context trying to shoehorn it into meaning something else makes me feel like hue must be one of the best presidents of all time. I'll probably never again in my life see a US president for whom they have to reach so hard to find something to criticize.
Sounds like LBJ when he said giving black folks welfare will keep 'em voting democrat for years
Douglass was a great student and far more of a role model in my mind than MLK. I think it's a disservice that more people don't learn about him in US History classes.
When I hear these terms I always know propaganda follows, with zero truth behind it.