@roamer_1 One has to be careful of a certain normalcy bias = The concept of emancipation was a brand new thing in both England and the States. Something so vastly rooted in history has it's own sort of mass. It does not (cannot) be swept away in a day and an hour, once it is realized. Remember, there had never been a time without slavery prior to the West.
All I can liken it to is in myself - I am a Messianic Christian... And as much as I know my beliefs to be right, proven to be right in my own mind, it is a very hard thing for me to discount what I was raised with - What Christians have believed for so very long. It doesn't come easy, I'll tell you what... Even fully knowing, and full of conviction.
And that is but in a single mind... Extrapolate that into societal norms wrt slaves... How does an agrarian society replace that necessary manpower? It is no small thing.
I'm not criticizing the Founders for making that compromise. I understand why they did. I'm simply pointing out that it
was a compromise, made because they didn't believe it was possible politically to achieve what (some of them) knew to be morally right. And I'm making that point because some are denigrating "half-steps" here as being immoral compromises, and I'd suggest that compromising on something as morally offensive as
slavery would be even worse. But they did it because they knew it was the only way to increase
net liberty.
And that increase in "net" liberty is an important distinction, because there are bad compromises, and good compromises. The difference between the two is in relation to the status quo. A bad compromise is one that makes us more statist than the status quo. An example of that was Bush's prescription drug plan for seniors. Yes, it was less liberal than Al Gore's, but it was still more statist than having no such plan at all, which was the status quo when Bush took office.
A good compromise is one that makes us
less statist. Welfare reform in the mid-1990's didn't eliminate welfare, but it did
reduce it, and add some restrictions that didn't previously exist. Now, the no-compromise crowd could criticize that and say "that just amounts to the GOP endorsing the welfare system that remained", but the net effect was nevertheless still positive.
Obviously, in making a "good" compromise, we always want to get as much as we can. I just don't think we should reject even baby steps in our direction if the only realistic alternative is no steps at all. Now obviously, people can disagree on what is truly possible politically. But once it is clear what is possible, and what is not, we shouldn't refrain from making the best "good" deal that we can, even if it leaves something we detest still in place partially.
Because that's what the Founder did with slavery. They surrendered Congress' right to eliminate the slave trade for 20 years, which certainly was immoral standing on it's own. But they did end up eliminating the trade in 1808, which was a better result than if no country had been formed at all.
