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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint: many of the founding fathers were crazy sexist racists, yet we still hold their other opinions in quite high regard.

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That was 240 years ago. We recognize the value they added and understand them in their historical context.

That's a popular misconception, like "everyone thought the world was flat before Columbus reached America."

The immorality of slavery was recognized hundreds of years before the founding of the US. It was abolished in France in the 1300s, in Sweden in 1335, etc. It was never really legal in England and that fact was recognized in 1706, about 40 years before Thomas Jefferson was born. The founders' condoning slavery was a deeply immoral political expedient that was recognized by many as immoral even contemporaneously.

But that's besides the point. The fact that the founders were individually contemptible people doesn't mean their ideas were wrong. You can agree with many of the things Thomas Jefferson said without personally condoning slavery and rape.

The founders were not "individually contemptible" because they couldn't destroy the institution of slavery at the same time they created an independent American nation. In fact, everyday slaveholders were not automatically "individually contemptible". Involvement in widespread cultural norms like slavery should not, in itself, be seen as a personal character indictment.

No "we" don't. Not all of us. Many of us hold the Founding Fathers in deep contempt. There is now DNA evidence showing that Thomas Jefferson raped Sally Hemings. That means that all of Thomas Jefferson's writings, including the Declaration Of Independence, needs to be re-evaluated and perhaps put aside.

If we're going to look at historical figures through modern lenses and discredit their works if we find they don't measure up to our modern morality, we're not going to have much left. It's more than likely that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle engaged in sexual acts with young boys, for instance - in our world, these philosophers would be on a list and couldn't live within 500 yards of a school, let alone found one, but in theirs, pederasty was common, accepted, and even lauded.

I'm intrigued. How could DNA provide evidence of rape?

DNA provides evidence of paternity of Sally Heming's children. Which appears to be that the father was Sally Heming's owner Thomas Jefferson. Sally Heming may have been head over heels in love with Thomas Jefferson. But on the balance of probability I would guess there might have been coercion (hence rape) from a slave owner to a slave. Evidence, not proof.

Hypocrisy of Jefferson's personal conduct doesn't change the validity (or lack thereof) of the logical arguments he made in his writings. If they held to rational scrutiny before, they still do after.

You've presented us with a logical fallacy:

http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Hitler_Ate_Sugar

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