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gandalf_el_brown t1_j8o7qkp wrote

At what point can we say we've slided into a police state or fascism?

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VeteranSergeant t1_j8ocqhe wrote

Never. That would mean that at some point we weren't a fascist police state. We wrote a Constitution that not only allowed people to be owned, but then gave them 3/5ths credit toward representation, just to appease the people who owned them.

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[deleted] t1_j8oisud wrote

[removed]

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lazys_world t1_j8pdno5 wrote

All (white) men.

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Calavant t1_j8pkkj4 wrote

White male property owners who were protestant and not Irish or any of a host of other ethnicities that were arbitrarily decreed not white enough somehow.

It was better than nothing in practice and genuinely good in principle. But we need to remember that it was made in a cruel time as a compromise between flawed people. They needed something to prop up the fragile Republic today rather than something perfect tomorrow.

Still, the ideal of it... buried under all that compromise... is worth recognizing.

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Coffinspired t1_j8qo3e0 wrote

I don't know about all that. This is sounding quite a bit white-washy and idealistic.

> It was better than nothing in practice and genuinely good in principle.

I don't think the people who were considered property instead of humans would agree.

> But we need to remember that it was made in a cruel time as a compromise between flawed people.

We don't live in a fair and just time full of perfect people today either, what is the specific distinction you're trying to make between then and now regarding people or society? Slavery? Slavery is still legal in much of the US...today.

Many of the Founding Fathers themselves were racist slave-owning pieces of shit. Among other horrendous things.

They shouldn't be put on a pedestal or lionized. Ditto for the Constitution.

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