![]() ![]() No less an authority than Aristotle reminded his elite male readers that their very humanity depended on slaves performing the labor necessary for their bodily survival, leaving them free to devote themselves to uniquely human pursuits. We might say the same of liberal responses to any number of catastrophes we face today, from mass poverty to global climate change.Īffirmations of the special dignity of humanity also served to justify slavery. Despite the genuine moral revulsion of many liberals toward slavery, the individual right to private property stymied efforts to overthrow it. Sandford decision, the Supreme Court not only denied citizenship and rights to people of African descent, but also affirmed that slavery enjoyed the same constitutional protections as every other form of property-holding. But liberalism meant that no matter what a legislator or judge thought of people of African descent or the morality of holding slaves, the state could not interfere with private property rights. Racism was, of course, central to the definition of some human beings as property. Liberalism defined rights as private, and the ultimate such right was the right to hold private property. Strange though it may seem today, liberalism-the political doctrine that attributed rights to individuals that no government, no matter how democratic or just, could violate-offered one of the most important legal and ideological protections for slavery in the nineteenth century. Liberal humanism has long been central to the political ideology of slaveholders and their allies and abettors. ![]()
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