> You can not look history from a lens of our modern ethics. Doing so is fraught with problems and you end up missing the the lessons history has for us, and wo

> You can not look history from a lens of our modern ethics. Doing so is fraught with problems and you end up missing the the lessons history has for us, and worse you can never see anything good about history. You absolutely can though. There aren't really problems with it. The problems you describe aren't problems with the ethical lens you look at history with. They're just historical facts that I guess you thought I didn't know. As for "anything good about history" I'm not really sure what you mean. History is amoral. It isn't good or bad, it just is. I think it's good to analyze it through a wide variety of lenses. Analyzing actions both via modern and contemporary lenses makes sense, both have value! > Slavery was terrible, but when people look at history I have often had people point to the 3/5's clause in the constitution as an example of racism. They don't understand that is was the abolitionist that fought for that, the slave owners wanted all slaves to be counted as whole persons, it would have given them more power and likely could have resulted in slavery lasting longer. Right so to rephrase this: neither the north nor the south consider black people worthy of citizenship/personhood. Both (and admittedly primarily the south) were willing to use them as a political football anyhow though. Like the north's position here isn't noble or anything. It's all bad. Its an interesting historical fact, yes, but there's no ethical lesson to be found. > You never learn that the original draft of the Declaration Condemned slavery as one of the crimes committed by the King, Jefferson writing "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him". I mean but you still do learn this. Nothing stops you. It just again, isn't noble. It's perhaps worse? The colonists had no excuse. They knew slavery was monstrous and yet the allowed their new nation to be founded with it, and kicked the can down the road (Article 1, Section 9). Like do you not find it terribly hypocritical to use this as one of the intended reasons to declare independence, and then turn around and do it yourself immediately? Like judging Jefferson by Jefferson's own ethics, he was "violating [human nature's] most sacred rights of life & liberty". > The Senate should not be voted on at all IMO, I think that 17th Amendment has been a net negative for the nation. Sure, yeah, even if we assume that's true (I think the federal system is fairly problematic, but let's pretend it's not), the rampant fraud in senate appointments wasn't great. > has allowed for massive "interpretation" I agree with you here. Comparing the US constitution to any modern European constitution and for example one thing we've learned is that a constitution should be written with precision, not in vague flowery language. > I look back to the original constitution, you see racism and an attempt put white men in power, I see a set of principles for limited government that would start the world down the path of the greatest expansion of Individual freedom in world history. I see both, but by your own admission it failed at getting you limited government, and the racism is still around.