I'd say in the last 50 yrs we have elected the wrong people and believe me they have taken this country to the cleaners . the military is admitting it cannt find how many millions of dollars clinton mislaid multimillions ? and no body really seems to care.In all the years the last eight has been a fountain of money for these politicans because you and I know its in somebodys pocket. Why has nobody tried finding it because they know where it is thats why.

Loki, are you really wanting to say if you disagree--get lost! The Left has no legitimate voice? We only speak incestual agreement among the tribe here at OPP? Join or die? No debate? No counter-point? I find it hard to believe that you are actually advocating doing away with Free Speech. You are an intelligent person and did not get that way without challenges to your thinking? You want to do away with such challenges and get all Yes Men? Your attitude really throws me for a lope and spirals into despair.

"These beliefs reflected the reality of the period"? Here is a history that disputes that.
3rd century BC: Ashoka abolishes slave trade and encourages people to treat slaves well but does not abolish slavery itself in the Maurya Empire, covering the majority of India, which was under his rule.[1]
221–206 BC: The Qin Dynasty's measures to eliminate the landowning aristocracy include the abolition of slavery and the establishment of a free peasantry who owed taxes and labor to the state. They also discouraged serfdom.[2] The dynasty was overthrown in 206 BC and many of its laws were overturned.
9–12 A.D.: Wang Mang, first and only emperor of the Xin Dynasty, usurped the Chinese throne and instituted a series of sweeping reforms, including the abolition of slavery and radical land reform from 9–12 A.D.[3][4]

Medieval timeline

N.B.: Many of the listed reforms were reversed over succeeding centuries.

~500: Slavery (or at least slave trading) ends for a time in Ireland,[5] but resumes by the ninth century.[6]
(610–632)" Muhammed, in Arabia with Islamic views on slavery first developed out of the slavery practices of pre-Islamic Arabia,[7] and were at times radically different, depending on social-political factors such as the Arab slave trade.The Quran provides for emancipation of only muslim slaves as a means of religious atonement for sins.[8] One of the five pillars of Islam, zakāt, is meant to encourage Muslims to donate money to free slaves and bonded laborers in countries where slaves and bonded laborers may exist, in the hope that over time there will be no slaves left in that country.[9] Qu'ran still establishes slavery as part of the natural order, in chapter 16.
873: Pope John VIII commanded under penalty of sin that all Christians who hold other Christians as slaves must set them free. [10]
960: Doge of Venice Pietro IV Candiano reconvened the popular assembly and had it approve of a law prohibiting the slave trade in the Italian city-state the Republic of Venice.
1080 William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and French conqueror of England, prohibits the sale of any persons to heathens (non-Christians) as slaves.
1102: Trade in slaves and serfdom is condemned by the church in London: Council of London (1102).
1117: Slavery abolished in Iceland[11] (reintroduced as Vistarband from 1490 to 1894 in various forms).
1214: The Statute of the Town of Korčula (today in Croatia) abolishes slavery.[12]
1215: Magna Carta signed. Clause 30, commonly known as Habeas Corpus, would form the basis of a law against slavery in English common law.
~1220: The Sachsenspiegel, the most influential German code of law from the Middle Ages, condemns slavery as a violation of man's likeness to God.[13]
1256: The Liber Paradisus is promulgated. The Comune di Bologna abolishes slavery and serfdom and releases all the serfs in its territories.
1274: Landslov (Land's Law) in Norway mentions only former slaves, which indicates that slavery was abolished in Norway
1290: Edward I of England passes Quia Emptores, breaking any indenture to an estate, on the sale or transfer of the estate.
1315: Louis X, King of France, publishes a decree abolishing slavery and proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and that any slave setting foot on French ground should be freed.[14] However some limited cases of slavery continued till the 17th century in some of France's Mediterranean harbours in Provence, as well as till the 18th century in some of France's overseas territories.[15]
1335: Sweden (including Finland at the time) makes slavery illegal. An abolition of slaves setting foot on Swedish ground does not occur until 1813[16] (in the 18th and 19th Centuries, slavery would be practiced in the Swedish-ruled Caribbean island of Saint Barthélemy).
1347: Non-free people were emancipated in Poland under the Statutes of Casimir the Great issued in Wiślica.[17]
1368: China's Hongwu Emperor establishes the Ming dynasty and would abolish all forms of slavery.[3] However, slavery continued in the Ming dynasty. Later Ming rulers, as a way of limiting slavery in the absence of a prohibition, passed a decree that limited the number of slaves that could be held per household and extracted a severe tax from slave owners.[18]
1416: Republic of Ragusa (modern day Dubrovnik, Croatia) abolished slavery and slave trading
1435: In Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugene IV banned enslavement of Christians in the Canary Islands on pain of excommunication.[19] However the non-Christian indigenous Guanches could be and were enslaved during the Spanish conquest.[15]

Modern timeline
1500–1700 (Early Modern)

1537: Pope Paul III forbids slavery of the indigenous peoples of the Americas as well as of any other new population that would be discovered, indicating their right to freedom and property (Sublimis Deus).[20]
1542: Spain enacted the New Laws, abolishing slavery of Native Americans in 1542, but replaced it with other systems of forced labor such as repartimiento. Slavery of Black Africans was not abolished.[15]
1569: An English court case involving Cartwright, who had brought a slave from Russia, is said on the basis of a summary written more than a century later, to have ruled slavery illegal in England, but appears to have been more about the nature of legally acceptable punishment than slavery per se, and certainly did not soon become a recognized precedent for outlawing slavery as slaves continued to be bought and sold in Liverpool and London markets without legal hindrance into the 18th century. See the article "Slavery at common law".
1588: The Third Statute of Lithuania abolishes slavery.[21]
1595: A law is passed in Portugal banning the selling and buying of Chinese slaves.[22]
1590: Toyotomi Hideyoshi bans slavery in Japan.[23] However, it continued as a punishment for criminals.
19 February 1624: The King of Portugal forbids the enslavement of Chinese of either sex.[24][25]
1683: The Spanish Crown legally abolishes the slavery of indigenous Mapuche prisoners of war in Chile.[26]

1701–1799
1706: In the case of Smith v. Browne & Cooper, Sir John Holt, Lord Chief Justice of England, rules that "as soon as a Negro comes into England, he becomes free. One may be a villein in England, but not a slave."[27][28]
1723: Russia abolishes outright slavery but retains serfdom.[29]
1723–1730: China's Yongzheng emancipation sought to free all slaves to strengthen the autocratic ruler through a kind of social leveling that created an undifferentiated class of free subjects under the throne. Although these new regulations freed the vast majority of slaves, wealthy families continued to use slave labor into the twentieth century.[18]
1733–1750 The Province of Georgia in America is established without slavery in sharp contrast to neighboring Carolina. In 1738, James Oglethorpe warns against changing that policy, which would "occasion the misery of thousands in Africa."[30]
1761, 12 February: Portugal abolishes slavery[31] in mainland Portugal and in Portuguese possessions in India through a decree by the Marquis of Pombal.
1772: Somersett's case held that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain. This case was generally taken at the time to have decided that the condition of slavery did not exist under English law in England and Wales, and emancipated the remaining ten to fourteen thousand slaves or possible slaves in England and Wales, who were mostly domestic servants.[32]
1774: Laws of the Marquis of Pombal, prime minister of King José I, prohibiting the transport of black slaves to Portugal and the liberation of the children of slaves born in Portugal.[clarification needed]
1775–83: Britain's rebellious North American Colonies ban or suspend the Atlantic slave trade.[33]

"Slavery began to be seen in a bad light after the industrial revolution made slavery less profitable in many places. Capitalism, rather than morality, began the demise of slavery." This history above proves this just another white apologist argument.

"you cannot judge people of another era by the standards of this one. Their reality was much harsher than ours, their beliefs correspondingly different. They have to be judged against the backdrop of the physical reality of the time and place in which they existed. The moral code they adhered to was one born of the times. Flogging, public executions and the stocks were also commonplace and accepted as perfectly normal. Witchcraft was the explanation for imperfectly understood scientific phenomena. A person from today who was transported back to the Spain and Portugal of Columbus, Ferdinand and Isabella would quickly find him or herself the guest of honor at an impromptu party thrown by Tomas de Torquemada and his boys." Tell that to Jesus. And as already demonstrated, opposition to slavery was ancient. Could any thinking person of conscience condone it? Peer pressure? They were all doing it? Just a sign of the times? Give me a freaking break. Sorry, I am always very bothered when the Right become an apologist of horrific behavior as some kind of norm or acceptable practice. Like the internment of Japanese American-citizens during WWII.

There are several intelligent Liberals on OPP with whom I debate courteously. We agree on almost nothing, yet manage to remain civil to each other. I respond in kind. My comments on your understanding of history were not insulting, they were simply an observation that you are not displaying the breadth of understanding most Liberals claim to possess. I have nailed more than one so-called conservative also. Differences of opinion are vital. I prefer the high road, but I'm pretty well-versed in the other options.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Blame it on Lincoln! No need to repent, unless Hot Air, you have a few in hiding!

They were men, like you and I and had their faults. Most were brilliant and one of those history surprises at being perfect and needed for their time. Without Franklyn, Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, and others were would the world be? Terrible to contemplate. Yet human, nonetheless. Almost all held slaves and believed in that horrid system. The wrongness of slavery was not something to be discovered in 1861. In producing the Constitution this point was hotly debated. Its evil was all too well known. But pragmatism took over: to form a more perfect union, unite as one voice, the millions of slaves suffering untold pain would continue. Think about that. And please come to the inevitable and eventual conclusion--How could they do that! It makes a joke and utter mockery of the Declaration of Independence. It was a lie! A farce! A Hypocrisy Oath.