This was actually a serious problem for a few decades, though. The conflict wasn't about the right of people to own other people in the first place, but the right of people to keep the property they already had. Since John Locke, property was seen as the basis of government legitimacy, so that was a big deal. At least according to my history teacher a couple semesters ago, it wasn't really resolved until the ideals of The Enlightenment were weakened, and people became comfortable with calling a thing wrong because it felt wrong.
The ideals of The Enlightenment are roughly my ideals, so I far prefer Frederick Douglass's approach of arguing the relative importance of conflicting rights to Thoreau and Emerson's "some things are just wrong" approach.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2006-05-21 02:22 am (UTC)The ideals of The Enlightenment are roughly my ideals, so I far prefer Frederick Douglass's approach of arguing the relative importance of conflicting rights to Thoreau and Emerson's "some things are just wrong" approach.