Debating Anti's: Founding Fathers, Bill of Rights & Slavery

[BerettaNut92]

If I bring up the Bill of Rights, the constitution comes up, and an Anti responds that the BOR was written by slave owners, which suddenly invalidates the 2nd Amendment (but magically not the 1st ), how do you normally respond?

 

[SIGarmed]

Well you may start by reminding them that because of the founding fathers they have the right to free speach, freedom from unlawfull search and seizure, and everything else that comes with the Constitution and Bill of Rights that they enjoy today.

If because they were slave owners the 2nd doesn't matter they shouldn't have any other rights either.

Also these rights we have weren't given to us by government they are just pointed out. Because the founding fathers pointed them out it eventually led to the courts affirming that they apply to all. Hey if this country didn't start as a republic with our founding fathers would we still have slavery?

 

[swingset]

Out of the 55 delegates of the Consitutional Convention, only 12 owned slaves:

Bassett, Blair, Blount, Butler, Carroll, Jenifer, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington. Madison also owned slaves.

Hardly an indictment of them all.

It's not like you can win the mind of an anti with logic. Tell them most gun control laws are racist and you don't support racist ideas or policies. Play their rhetoric against them, it's a more visceral attack - one they understand.

 

[geekWithA.45]

You hit it on the head: owning slaves doesn't invalidate squat.


The virtue of the BOR is self evident and inherent, and has nothing to do with the virtue or lack thereof of those who articulated it.

Jesus was a sabbath breaker. Does this invalidate the new testament?

 

[cuchulainn]

"Invalidate" Yep, I concur with the rest: It's nothing but an ad hominem argument.

However, I think the intent behind your opponents' slavery comment is that the Founders were not inviolate, perfect, god-like solons. If the Founders were mistaken about slavery, then maybe they were mistaken about guns.

Your opponents are attempting to point out a logical flaw common to our side: Appeal to Authority (of the Founders).

Fair enough, but a red herring nonetheless.

It's an easy red herring to dismiss. Tell them:

"You are right. The Founders were not perfect.

I acknowledge that their being the mythical 'Founders' does not make the 2nd Amendment automatically correct. That would be an Appeal to Authority fallacy, and I promise not to resort to it.

However, that some of them were slave owners similarly does not make the 2nd Amendment automatically wrong. That would be an Ad Hominem fallacy. I hope that you will promise not to resort to it.

Now, let's get back to discussing the merits of the 2nd Amendment and gun ownership."

 

[Harold Mayo]

I've really pretty much given up "debating" with anti's. What is absolute, naked truth to us is not to them.

It's like trying to debate religion. It's really a matter of a belief system and it doesn't HAVE to be logical. The only people who can prove that God exists with logic are the ones who believe it, anyway. Trying to prove through logic to a Christian that God does NOT exist isn't going to work because they already believe.

I had a little "debate" with some people on another forum recently. I laid out in very simple terms what my stance was and I was bombarded with demands for "proof". Proof? "What's that?", I asked. "Documentation", they said. "Whatever for?", I replied. "To prove your point", they said. I became a little frustrated at that point. I told them that I could cite author after author and web site after web site that agreed with me, but why would showing that people agreed with me validate my point? What am I going to do, cite information that DISagrees with me? Just because I can find published sources that agree with me doesn't prove that I am right nor would their citing of published sources that disagree with me invalidate my conclusions. I don't NEED to cite "proof", I realized. I believe what I believe and those beliefs are based on FACTS. I asked them that, if I revealed to them that I was a famous published author whose opinion they respected, would they then accept my stance? They replied that then it would be different. But would it? NOPE.

It just isn't worth debating stuff like that, anymore. I do it for kicks more than anything else. Very rarely will anyone ever be swayed.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Well duh. I guess those antis raise a very good point about invalidating the Second Amendment. Can't have guns to keep to slaves under control, can we?

I think we can extend the foolishness of their assertion by also invalidating their cherished First Amendment freedom of speech, assembly, & press. Clearly those "cherished rights" were also written by those slaveowner repressors of humankind. BTW, the right to be secure in their homes from unreasonable search and seizure don't mean squat either, does it? After all, don't we want to enter their homes to seize guns, drugs and evidence of sedition? That way we can violate their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination (and those troublesome attorneys).

The Constitution, it's a package deal and not a pie meant to be served by slices.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Arguing with anti-Second Amendment bigots is a lot like wrestling with pigs: you're going to get all muddy, and the pigs love it.

 

[Glock Glockler]

Skunk,

Try this one on them: Ask them if they know anything about Einstein, and they'll probably say that they know he did a lot of science stuff. Then ask them that if it was suddenly revealed that he was actually a child molester, would that invalidate his achievements in physics?

Some of the founding fathers might not have recognized Blacks as being fully human, but that does not invalidate their ideas of limited govt and an armed citizenry as a check on govt.

 

[Big Iron]

According to the book, "Vindicating the Founding Fathers", if abolishment of slavery was passed, there would have been no Union. This country would have died before it was born, the slave states would have never joined. The majority of the Fathers knew slavery was wrong, and should be abolished, but for the sake of this infant Republic it was not. If memory serves, it was only by one vote that it passed. However, as a compromise it was agreed that any new states to join the Union after a determined date would not be slave holding states. Sorry, I don't remember the date.

Just a little FYI, FWIW.

 

[Khornet]

For an eloquent destruction of this fallacy

see 'What's So Great About America' by Dinesh D'Souza. A must-read in any case, he makes essentially the point Big Iron makes. The Founders could have gone for perfection, and wound up with nothing. Refusing to make an issue of slavery in the beginning made it possible to end slavery.

As my old Medicine professor used to say:

The worst enemy of 'good' is....PERFECT.