One doesn't condone history. One condones the bad actions of people. Like slave-owning. As you did: 'Slave owning is OK as long as the law says so'. As you pointed out the law of Jefferson's time did.GlenQuagmire said:
For all his noble writings Jefferson, like everyone else, was not an entirely good man. In some aspects he was downright bad, even if he never saw the inside of the local pokey or had a judge tell him so.
But I'd just bet he'd have been uncomfortable with the logic-chopping and casuistry you're using to 'defend' him. Unless of course you're aware of some unknown footnote saying 'unalienable' is meant to apply only to white Virginia planters and their ilk, and only for as long as, and until modified by any legislative body authorized to do so. Such as GeorgeIII's Parliament at Westminster. Oops!
Either the truths are self-evident or the laws trump them. Can't have both, like you're trying to.
IF there are eternal truths ("self-evident" was his term) then not to apply them to all people, women and slaves included—even to decide not to by a vote—doesn't cut it. But we can promise that we will never be so crass and callous. If the Declaration was just a but of overblown contemporary pamphleteering, so be it, and we can still promise we'll make that cheap politicking real. Because either way that's a damn fine expression of what we should aim our governments at.
But lets try to leave the XVIIth C's hipocrysy behind us. We have enough of our own.
