The Original Constitution was Wrong

The fix is leading to another wrong.

Slavery is one thing the Constitution got wrong from the beginning, and we still live with this burden. The "Articles of Confederation" was the original organizing document after the American Revolution. There was so much wrong with the Articles that it had to be scrapped. The US Constitution took its place. The reason I bring this up is that the Articles of Confederation were silent on the issue of slavery, and during that time, six black slaves sued for their freedom and won.

The Constitution had slavery written in, even though most of the Founders either owned slaves they were NOT allowed to free or didn't own slaves at all. The law counted each black slave as 2/3 of a person. This gave their white slave owners a vested interest in keeping slaves and provided a political incentive for the continued owning and multiplying of slaves. This was an unspeakable injustice, especially since the incentive built in made the original end date of slavery in the Constitution a joke.

Now, the argument is shifting to prevent private owners from exercising private preferences or prejudices. This view is backed by 247 years of government meddling in private decisions.

The decision-making constraints on government are different than on private individuals and businesses. Rightly any person should have a right to choose his or her friends, business associates, and employees.

The simple rule is that governments, since they hold the objective use of force to maintain law and order for all the people over an area of land called a country, cannot be allowed or encouraged to discriminate between groups of people by race, religion, sex, creed, etc. In the United States, the rule of the Founders has been "innocent until proven guilty." Government institutionalizing racial preferences, no matter who is being preferred, is an anathema to justice.

It would be refreshing if people would consider that now is the time to privatize preferences and make a clear distinction between government-financed livelihoods (where discrimination is banned) and privately financed livelihoods, where individual preferences (aka discrimination) are treated as an aspect of cultural evolution and individual rights. Sometimes, we need to assume that people do not need new laws, especially laws that remove private choice and infantilize a population under the benevolent dictatorship of a Nanny State.

It’s on us to fix this. The two questions are:

How can we fix this? Who will listen?

What would you do?