Doss: Another of my…
Doss: Another of my troubles with the definition provided is the idea that Athenian Democrats would look at what we have now and call it tyranny, but in fact what they practiced was elective oligarchy- only rich men of the polis (not slaves, not women, not outsiders) could vote and the votes were binding on the rest of the population who had no say.
Sure, that’s a fair complaint. (Except that, terminologically speaking, what they had was pure, self-appointed oligarchy, not even elective oligarchy; the oligarchs voted amongst themselves, of course, but they weren’t elected by the subjects that they claimed the authority to rule over.) That said, I don’t think that the sorts of political institutions that the ruling men of Athens participated in depended on domination over an extensive slave class (either of socioeconomic status or of sex). The Athenian men disagreed (they tended to argue that liberty depended on the unearned leisure that they secured through violent extortion), but I simply think they were mistaken on that point; the institutions could and ought to have been opened to everyone in the name of liberty and human dignity. So, while I have no admiration for the Athenian “democrats,” I am willing to say some kind words for the democratic institutions that they advocated and built. The purpose of using it as a counterexample is simply to demonstrate that there is another way that popular sovereignty could be and has been practiced, besides just through elected legislatures or parliaments, and to illustrate the point that what democracy and democratic values have traditionally meant is supposed to be something much more direct than “rulers picked by the people.” The idea isn’t to provide an ideal case, but just to get people to think more about what kind of cases might be on offer.
Doss: I think it is somewhat unfair to him to judge him by today’s standards,
I don’t think of it as a matter of “today’s standards” as vs. “yesterday’s standards.” Slavery was as wrong in the 1770s as it is today; that’s a matter of human rights, not a matter of contemporary fashion.
As an empirical matter, it’s also wrong to suggest that slaveholding wasn’t known to be wrong at the time. Patrick Henry, for one, knew it; he said that it was wrong in his letters but never did anything about it when he had the direct and immediate power to do so. Moreover, I think that the idea that the beliefs popular amongst slavers constitute the only “standards” of the time is a mistaken one. Lots of people at the time weren’t so keen on slavery; chief among them, the slaves.
Doss: … and I don’t think hypocrisy per se is a major sin or vice (depends on the consequences).
No, but slavery is.
The reason I think that Henry was a scoundrel was that he held slaves. I mention hypocrisy only because it helps explain why I don’t think that his posturing in defense of liberty merits any admiration for him as a person (although the speech itself is worthy of remembering, and emulating).
Anticopyright.