would America be more liberal if slavery never happened?

[Syrinx]

I haven't really thought this idea through; it's something that just occurred to me.

I'm thinking that the American "conservative" movement is really based largely on racial fears and resentments.

Suppose for a moment that slavery never happened. This would be an almost all-white nation. I think people would be more accepting of left-wing ideas, because they wouldn't be seen as benefiting "those other people."

Like I said, it's just something that popped into my mind. Thinking out loud here. :)

[But....]

1. It's a sad possible...

you could be right:scared:

[judasdisney]

2. As Norman Mailer wrote, democracy is the exception in world history. Get ready for

Neo-feudalism. Look at India. They don't have racism, they replaced it with a CASTE-system. Thousands of years old.

It ain't race. It's greed. Some humans are spiders.

[JCMach1]

3. NO... much of the American progressive movement has its roots in the abolitionists

[Iterate]

4. No, still a change/same divide.

It's built into our brains.

Perhaps look at Canada or Australia to suggest how it might have been different. Good topic for a long, thoughtful discussion after the election.

[chknltl]

5. We might instead have become more fascist at some point

Germany was not so much into slavery, they too had a democracy, things eventually worked out well for them but the struggle to get there was horrendous. Perhaps America might have traveled down that particular road instead....who knows if there would have been a Marshall Plan for us?

Frankly, taking things as they played out so far for America, I'm of the opinion that being embarrassed about our history means that there is hope for our future and for the future of the human race as well. It is good that we dwell on our past, especially I think, if we can look at that history more as human history than as this or that nation's history.

Ok I'm done bloviating now.

[rug]

6. '"Those who do not move do not notice their chains."

- Rosa Luxemburg

[But....]

8. Wow....

I love that quotation:toast:

[Spider Jerusalem]

7. The answer to your question is 'no'

and the conservative movement has more to do with Calvinism and the predestination of an 'elect' than with racial fear and resentment. Calvinism has been a prominent thread in American culture from the very beginning; the New England Puritans, the Scots and Scots-Irish Presbyterians (who later mostly became Baptists) who settled in the mountain South; all Calvinists. American conservatism is what it is largely because Britain's religious fanatics came here in large numbers.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

9. Certainly.

Canada never had a slave trade. They're "more white." And look how much better they turned ot.