 Tim Sandefur is the vice president for litigation at the Goldwater Institute where he serves as the chair for constitutional government He is a lawyer and author of many books among which is his latest Frederick Douglass self-made man Today on Liberty Chronicles He joins me to make the case that Douglass was not only an individualist, but he was a libertarian We'll talk about Douglass the slave the runaway and rebel the abolitionist and reformer Douglass the free-soiler and Douglass the Republican, but perhaps most of all Douglass the individualist versus Douglass the legend Welcome to Liberty Chronicles a project of libertarianism.org. I'm Anthony Comegna so to start us off talking about Frederick Douglass and his legacy and his role in history and perhaps in in libertarian history in particular I want to say that in your preface you note that let's let's call them public intellectuals have Historians and and other folks writing about Douglass have really bifurcated his legacy Into at least two different Douglass's there's there's the Frederick Douglass We remember who's the escaped slave and the hardcore abolitionist and then on the other hand There's this this forgotten Douglass who is sort of a fierce constitutionalist a racial Integrationists he opposes black nationalism. He's this weird laissez-faire liberal that historians today don't really understand and they seem Like these old relics, but here Douglass is one. He's a laissez-faire liberal. He's even an anti-communist, right? so I want to ask you why why have historians and public intellectuals distorted and Bifurcated his intellectual history like that. Well, I think there's two answers to that There's a class of I think the number one answer is because Douglass does not fit easily into the accepted political categories of Today and those are the categories that professional historians have in our day have grown up Recognizing and that's how they think of things and so you encounter a person like Douglass And he who doesn't fit into those categories and there's a tendency to want to jam him into one or the other or Disregard counter-counter evidence that suggests that he doesn't fit easily in those categories on the other hand There's also I think people who are really not being intellectually honest about Douglass and who intentionally disregard or downplay certain aspects of his legacy in order to use him for political purposes in Ways that serve what is generally the prevailing political attitude of the historical profession those what those people I I'm sorry to say I suspect that they purposely Elide Douglass's hostility to things like government aid programs or socialism in order to To make Douglass fit into the narrative that is accepted in the historical profession and that's particularly true I think about a figure like Douglass who is a reconstruction era Figure the history of the reconstruction era has been dominated by historians of the left political persuasion I'm thinking here for instance of Eric Foner who is a probably the leading historian of the Reconstruction era and is very far on the left. His father Philip Foner was a socialist and published Douglass's papers in five volumes through a Communist publisher because he was disregarded by the remain but Douglas was being disregarded by the mainstream political parties of the era and So it's the only natural we always put everybody puts their own in political biases into things that they Write and think about that's just natural and because that strain of the historical profession has been so far to the left It's only natural. I think that they disregard What are today regarded as conservative aspects of Douglass's Legacy for example, his hostility to labor unions His hostility towards socialism his emphasis on leave it leave us alone kind of laissez-faire liberalism of his era Now that said it is also true that Douglass was very far on what we would today call the left on certain aspects on racial issues and I think there's a tendency of on conservatives to downplay certain aspects of Douglass's life that might be construed as being anti-conservative So I you know, it's just it's just natural for writers to have their own biases in what they say And I think that's most of it but in the introduction I mentioned for instance Angela Davis who I think She's an example of one of the extremes on the left who I I think Purposely downplays aspects of Douglass that don't fit into her mold. I I personally love Eric Foner's work I mean, it's very good. Yeah, it's outstanding work. No question about it And he understands the libertarian perspective, too I think because he's one of the few proper historians who've really spent time with it seriously. So, you know, it I Sort of like you didn't to name more names about who do you think has really? purposefully distorted his view and Who do you think is is more? It makes more honest mistakes like perhaps owner with Douglass It's often omission is the thing a lot of Douglass Spent had a very long life and was involved in a lot of stuff And so it's easy by leaving some things out to give the readers an impression of one thing or another So some time ago, I think it was NPR aired a radio show That was a celebration of the work of Howard Zinn who is a pseudo intellectual Intellectually dishonest scholar of the left if you can even call him a scholar is the author of the people's history of the United States which is assigned reading in many colleges and Creates this mythology of very far left historiography and as part of that celebration the hired I think it was Morgan Freeman to read a passage or two from Douglass's most famous speech what to the slave is the Fourth of July and The passage from the speech that was read left out the end passage which discusses Douglass's belief that the United States Constitution quote Interpreted as it ought to be interpreted is a glorious Liberty document and By omitting that passage one is left with the impression that Douglass was one of these Garrisonian abolitionists who thought America was fundamentally evil because it was fundamentally a racist Nation and that mythology that America is a fundamentally racist nation is Absolutely crucial to the Howard Zinn strain of thought that interprets American society is fundamentally evil because of Capitalism libertarianism, etc. Etc. But now that's what I mean is that it's omission plays a large part of this Absolutely now you you said that you know there are these two sides to Douglass it's sort of a Not a specifically 19th century mix, but it's very common in the era to have these Conservative and these radical liberal elements sort of jammed together in your thinking I wonder is you know, is this a Little bit like what libertarians often do or at least get accused of doing with somebody like Thomas Jefferson Where you know, you bifurcate his legacy and focus on the things that you like or that works well for your message and Conveniently excuse the other things that are in fact so glaring, you know Well, I think I would quibble with the with the use of Jefferson as an example But I get your point and that and I would say that actually in my view It's the reverse in my view Libertarians are True to this traditional 19th century liberalism that believed in freedom across the board both in social and in economic Aspects and that it is our own perverse age that has chosen to bifurcate those two things and to say freedom in one But not freedom in the other and then the conservatives have freedom in one and not freedom in the other and liberals flip that around And have freedom in the other but not freedom in the one. That's our that's a modern day phenomenon in Douglas's day, I think he had the right view Which is that it should be freedom across the board or freedom and none Now in the introduction You note that Douglas believed that if black slaves were ever to be freed they would have to act to free themselves You know the famous saying he who would be free must himself strike the first blow And you say freedom was not and never could and could never be a gift given to black Americans by the white majority But isn't there a sort of a danger here that? White Americans might then shrug off the responsibilities that they do actually have Toward black Americans and and restricting their liberties. I mean what what did white Americans then actually? Toward the greater freedom for slaves That's a very good point and I think you can point to the Reconstruction era as a great example of that that very phenomenon happening and Douglas noticing it and commenting it on on it at the time beginning in the 1870s Douglas started to see around him a Trend toward reconciliation among whites that left Blacks out in the cold that left the former slaves to their own devices or or strip them of firearms And left them to the mercy of racist whites who wanted to Re-institute essential slavery and Douglas comments on this increasingly in his speeches at the time There is one particularly fine speech called there was a right side in the late war in which Douglas Complains about what was then a new phenomenon, which is the erection of statues to Confederate generals in the south and He says this is a terrible thing and we should not be standing for this He see he points out there are no generals to no statues of Union generals being put up in the south So it's not a matter of magnanimity toward those who suffered in the war This is a practical effort to re-institute the legitimacy of the southern cause He says and he was right about that we're still of course You know reaping the whirlwind of that in our in our own debates about whether to keep these Confederate monuments in place So Douglas was very worried about the fact that white Americans were Disregarding the fact that they had participated in the in the slavery system and Now once the war was over they wanted to wash their hands of it and say oh well It was all just a big misunderstanding and disregard the moral importance of the war so that's I think a very valid point and Now Switching gears a little bit to Douglas's actual life and his experiences He he wrote an awful lot about how the southern master class consciously and systematically made men into slaves as though it were a mechanical process, you know and You specifically isolate four steps to that process that I hope you could explain for us in some more detail First you rob the newly enslaved Or the unbroken slaves you rob them of their history Rob them of the protection of law the fruits of their labor and finally any kind of moral responsibility for themselves Can you explain that to us? Yeah, so Douglas in his first memoir was published in 1845 narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, and that's what everybody reads because it's short And easy to get through And and then ten years later He revised it into the much longer and more in-depth my bondage and my freedom and then at the end of his life He published the final version of his memoirs called the life and times of Frederick Douglass in beginning with the first one he tries to say this isn't just some sort of ad hoc cruelty by white people toward black people This is a system that is organized around the deprivation of humanity in this class of victims and He shows how it's consciously designed to do this and he uses for example Drunkenness he says masters will often give alcohol to their slaves and they do this on purpose in order He says to make them sick of the very idea of freedom so that during the holidays slaves can celebrate by getting drunk And then you know when the holidays are over they regret it and they get come to associate in their minds the idea of freedom with that kind of hangover and any he goes through Explaining how this is done in various ways in slave life depriving people of their history of their knowledge of their past where they come from of Their families particularly the family Douglas is very very emphatic about How destroying the black family was essential to slavery and slave children were taken away from their mothers At an early age because otherwise they would form these bonds That would that would allow them to unite in opposition to slavery and slave owners wanted to use Family connections to their own advantage and they did this by for example Threatening to punish Relatives of slaves who escaped Douglas himself had some close relatives who ran away and the master the very next day sold their children South into you know into the slavery of the worst slave plantations in the southern states so depriving people of of history of law of Us a feeling of getting a grip on the world makes a person Less able to plan for the future less resistant more pliant and And making sit feel make them make them feel like they have no efficacy and that was essential to slavery Of course depriving them of the fruits of their labor was the whole point of slavery in some regards, but it also had an important role to play in perpetuating slavery because of course earning from hard work gives one a sense of self-esteem and pride and Self-esteem and pride of course are contrary to the very essence of slavery and then moral responsibility is part of that Douglas emphasizes that to make a person into an automaton into a thing into a tool It's essential to destroy the sense in that person that they are responsible for their own lives Both the good and the bad in their lives and so slaves were systematically deprived of that in order to make them feel other dependency on the master class And now that that sort of brings me back to the question of Responsibility for all of this because on the one hand if Douglas seems to be of the mind that well black Americans the enslaved are going to have to Do this themself Just like I did right And then on the other hand he says that slavery is itself an abuse It lives by abuse and dies by the absence of abuse So then I guess if if you could stand in for Douglas here I would ask him well, shouldn't we then demand that the abusers stop Rather than blaming the victim for not rising up yet against them. Oh, absolutely And I don't want it to sound like Douglas is is blaming the victim He instead is he's trying to inspire the victim and all of his writings about self-esteem. He's trying to say It's not obviously it's not your fault that you've been reduced to slavery and been chained but you always retain that Little bit of moral choice in your brain the master can never actually reach that spark of independence And so you always have it in your power to say no in some regard and once you surrender it it's very hard to get it back and he illustrates this in his memoirs by Telling the stories of slaves who would refuse who would say no who would resist in some small way And they would be punished for it But they would retain that sense of pride and and Douglas says he is whipped oftenest who is whipped easiest And so when the war comes I think this all reaches a climax when the war comes and Douglas becomes a recruitment agent for the Union Army Signing up the freed slaves or norther than free blacks to join the military And I think it's really interesting when you read his speeches and his writings Where he says why you you should join the military he never or virtually never ever says You should join the military to serve your country that the very idea would have been absurd to him because of course the slaves Don't owe anything to the country if anything. It's the country that owes them the ability to serve in the military for their freedom He instead he insists you should do this for yourselves He tells the recruits you need to go join the army first because you need to get guns in your hands once Once you have a gun in your hand. It's harder for people to take it away from you Then he says you're gonna learn to use those guns because you're going to need to defend yourself once the war is over But most importantly of all you need to get that sense of self-esteem that sense of pride By fighting for your freedom and knowing that you have earned this thing and nobody can ever take that away from you I think that Douglas is the most important spokesman for the connection between personal self-esteem and political freedom before iron rand and and in fact who was only born about a decade after Douglas's death So I think Douglas's greatest contribution to libertarian thought is this essential point about personal pride and self-esteem being in the individual being the Essential attribute of a free society when that person is a citizen Now let's let's talk about that moment in Douglas's life that key moment Where he has the the standoff in the fight with Covey the overseer, right? This is a really amazing moment to me and it was really only in your book that this this sort of revelation came out to me I always learned about this moment where you know Covey is this man who's what he's an overseer, but he has a 400-acre farm of his own called Mount Misery You say in the book it has a striking resemblance to the concentration camps that come up come up later and Soviet gulags And slaves certainly thought of it that way, right? so Douglas is leased out to Covey and he's working his farm and They get into this battle and the two men are Sizing each other up circling each other for hours. You say it lasted about two hours, right? That is shocking to me because yeah, it is it's an amazing dramatic moment And of course Douglas used it for that dramatic impact in all of his life It became the central episode of his personal experience and the the basis of his lesson of Which was that he who would be free must himself strike the blow that this was the moment where that moment of that feeling that spark of self-esteem Was left to him and he and he seized upon it and made the most of it What the story is that Douglas was he was a teenager at the time and he was becoming rather Resistant to hit Thomas old his his owner And and so old decided to to break him by sent renting him out to Covey to to to break his spirit which Covey made extra money doing this on the side and Douglas spent about a year with him and for the first six months was beaten at least once a week for offenses real or imagined as a Method of breaking down his spirit and what's important I think about those beatings is that they weren't specifically for any particular thing the point of the beatings was precisely to not be predictable or rational or to have any connection to a system of rigid rules it was to Emphasize the the Caprice the irrationality of Douglas's situation and Douglas tells us that it worked In fact, there's reason to believe that he descended into alcoholism at this time in his life He lost his his desire to read He lost his desire to daydream about freedom because his his world shrank down to the the Particular moment of getting through that one day and what's what I thought was really interesting is how similar that Regimen is to what we are told was the circumstances in Nazi and Soviet prison camps the Psychological techniques that were used to break Douglas's spirit are very similar to those that were used in a on a factory-wide mass-produced highly technological scale in the 1930s and 40s and I should note That this was a whole cottage industry Well, maybe not even cottage at this point was a major industry writing agricultural manuals that taught you how to handle your slaves too and how to break them and I mean it was all systematic and scientific and academic and professionalized was right at that point, you know, it's the we're talking about the 1830s 1840s period So industry in the factory and things like those are just starting out This is the point where the industrial revolution is becoming the consumer revolution that will later Manifest itself and things like the seers robot catalog of the 1890s So this is just at the beginning but what we see at this era is that people are being turned into livestock on what we would today call incipient factory farms, which by the way is a point that is exploited to very effective dramatic Effect in a recent novel called underground airlines by Ben Winters Which imagines a future in which slavery was never destroyed and then what would it be like in the 20th century? And it does so on in just this way of imagining factory farms that are populated by slaves Who have been subjected to an additional century of this systematic abuse? and I know just taking One more moment to talk about this exchange this this battle with the Covey the overseer You know two hours is no mere moment, right? Like that's how I remember learning about this in school Oh, yeah, he fought the dude and hit him in the face and that was that The guy back down the white guy back down But that's that is not what happened to two hours of them squaring off like that and apparently what there were other slaves Viewing it watching it, right? Yeah And not just two hours, but two hours in in the August Sun in Maryland I mean if any of you ever spent an hour in the August Sun in Maryland, you know what that's like I live in Baltimore. I live in Frederick Douglass country. Yeah Well, so so yeah Douglass Tells us in here now the way he tells the story He says that he only defended himself and that he didn't actually hit Covey, but just fended off his blows I have my doubts about that. I can't imagine you can actually have a two-hour fight where that happens And Douglas was writing this for publication by a group of abolitionists who were Pacifists who didn't believe in violent uprising So it's possible that he shaded this down and and downplayed the actual violence that occurred Incidentally, however, he mentions that at one point in the fight Covey called a relative over to help him subdue Douglas And Douglas punched him really hard in the stomach. So we do know that at least to some degree This was a very serious fight But the the lesson that Douglas drew from it was that resistance was was critical to your own sense of Being a human being and and when the fight was over Douglas tells us Covey didn't beat him again He stumbled away and said if you hadn't whipped me so hard If you hadn't resisted so hard, I wouldn't have whipped you so hard But he hadn't whipped Douglas and and that was the essential lesson. I and I just one more thing I find it so fantastic that there are other slaves watching this because that itself is an act of solidarity and subversion Right. Yes. Letting this happen They do show solidarity in this moment when when he orders some of the slaves to help him and they say no They refuse to say I came here to work not to help you beat up Fred And so there that was an essential part of that story. Absolutely. I mean that that's just amazing to me I I love that anecdote and I do think that it's told in this book in a way that you just don't hear about it other other places Now moving moving on to some elements of his career and politics and speech making Have you ever run across any evidence that Frederick Douglass had exchanges with the loco-focos a Radical faction of Jacksonians Well, I mean he must have but I you know the for one thing the literature on Douglas is still in a fairly sparse state There was this five volume said I mentioned that Philip Foner published of his writings and speeches and then since then there's they've been working at a University on publishing the complete Douglas papers, but that has not been completed There's a new very long book that is destined to come out in this fall a full-length biography of Douglas that taps into some previously unknown material and So the historians are still putting together Douglas's life His papers at the University Library of Congress are surprisingly incomplete and then some of his papers are scattered across the country in various archives So we can't really know for sure who who he did and did not have contact with but Douglas's primary intellectual influences were first William Lloyd Garrison and Garrison's abolitionists based in Massachusetts and then secondly Jared Smith and Smith's New York based abolitionists and I think Smith probably had a closer connections with that group of Democrats Oh, yeah. Yeah, he definitely did And now the the free soillers that that's what we just covered on the show We have three episodes on the the free soil movement in 1848 I wondered if you could give us sort of an overview of Douglas's interactions with the free soil party Well, Douglas's relationships with different political parties gets rather complicated And so it's it's best to start by saying when he escaped from slavery in the 1830s He very quickly joined the Garrisonian abolitionists who did not believe in participating in politics at all They thought doing anything to having anything to do with politics just lent Credibility to the evil corrupt system and that the only real solution to slavery was to abolish the United States Constitution Garrison said what would burn the Constitution at his speeches and he said no union with slaveholders That was his motto he said that the north should secede from the south in order to have nothing to do with slavery and for the first several years Douglas Agreed with that naturally enough. He was a young man Fresh on his own and he was being taught by them But he very quickly started to have questions and disagreements with them I think first over the the issue of violence in his memoirs And then secondly when he went to Europe on a speaking tour that lasted a year in England and Ireland He came to Into association with anti-slavery forces there who had done a lot of good work Through politics and I suspect that they immediately started to to persuade him that participating in politics was a good thing And upon his return to the United States Douglas very soon afterwards Started his own newspaper and moved to New York and it was there that he fell into the sway of Jared Smith and Smith Was a pro-constitution abolitionist who believed in participating in politics organized the liberty party the first anti-slavery political party Which then gradually mutated into the free soil party and then the republican party and Douglas in Announced his his change of mind in an article titled announcement of a change of mind In which he said I no longer hold the Constitution to be a pro-slavery document I now believe that it is a is essentially a pro-freedom document if it were enforced by Public officials who were willing to do so and he never let go of that of that view It was a rather bitter feud in fact in the very first biography of Douglas that was published in the 1890 shortly before his death The author mentions that he still couldn't really get a lot of interviews with some of the garrisonians because they still had not recovered from this this Unfighting within the the group so Douglas then goes on and participates in these incipient anti-slavery parties, although he apparently voted for Jared Smith rather than Lincoln And and it was it was a while before he joined the republican ranks It was really only when the war started that he joined the republican party and uh Use you seem to take the garrisonian line in your book that the free soil party was a fiasco I wonder if you can just elaborate briefly on why you think the free soil party was a fiasco It's probably the only thing I do agree with garrison on Yeah, well, so the free the you know the free soilers the liberty party they this is a group of you know They're extremists. They're they're kind of like the libertarian party is today They stand on the outside the mainstream parties of the era And in an effort to gain more attention for themselves at one point they nominated for their candidate for the presidency Martin van Buren Now van Buren what he had been president after jackson. He had overseen the trail of tears He had overseen the the government's Opposition to the amistad rebels lawsuit you remember from the classic movie with By steven spielberg this true story of slaves who rebelled against their captors on a slave ship But were captured and put on trial and their case went to the u.s. Supreme court And it was the van Buren administration that pushed hard to re enslave the africans so van buren had no Credibility as an anti slavery figure and the only reason that the party chose him as their candidate was because they hoped his name recognition would get them Somewhere and of course it didn't and the garrisonians are sitting there chuckling behind their hands At how in this the the libertarian the liberty party people had sacrificed their principles for temporary Notoriety and they saw that as proving their point that political participation would accomplish nothing in anti slavery work Of course, it was not that long afterwards that lincoln was elected and in my view the the pro political Anti-slavery people like jerry smith were vindicated And then later in douglas's life after the war after abolition Um, and even after you know some measure at least of civil rights had been accomplished In some of the states let's say this is of course the era of creeping jim crow This 1660 or 1860s 1870s until reconstruction fails um In in this period after the war it seems like douglas spends a lot of his time Choosing to criticize southern blacks for one thing or another. Uh, like you you mentioned the exodusters phenomenon for example Is it is it possible that douglas was a just a bit of a contrarian? Yeah, I think there's no question that he had that stripe in him There's this great legend that that he when he was an old man a young man came to visit him and asked him What he should do with his life and douglas answered agitate agitate agitate Uh, which it's a wonderful story Now keeping in mind that douglas's form of agitation was always intellectual agitation It wasn't just rabble rousing But uh, yeah, I think there was some contrarianism in him But I also think there's an a sense in which he was overly optimistic about the situation in the south in the years right around reconstruction douglas There was this period after the end of the war and before it becomes really clear to him that the That's civil rights are being totally abandoned in the south when he still thinks that there's a way That that perhaps that the negatives are being exaggerated I mean, it's hard. I don't want to put those words into his mouth But that's that's the sense one gets because he opposes the exodus movement Which is this movement of southern blacks to move to places like kansas To get away from the south where their rights are being violated and douglas is opposed to this for a number of reasons One he says if you go to kansas, you have no history there And so you're going to be looked upon as intruders by the local white population and that will harm you politically Secondly, you won't be concentrated It'll be spread out and that'll harm you politically also and thirdly in the south you have this hard one claim to civil rights There where and and you have these bonds there this history there that strengthens your hand And so and and if and but most importantly, I think that the fourth thing is he says if you move You are giving boldness to the white supremacists who insist on you moving If you give in and surrender to them that that only makes them stronger in saying you don't belong here And I think those arguments, you know, there's merit to those arguments And the problem is that the the opposition was just too strong And the feds were not really committed to defending civil rights in the south by that time Grant did his best but after him it petered out So that even douglas later changed his mind and said, yeah, you know, it makes sense for you to leave But douglas really was resistant to that because I think it all plays back into his opposition to black nationalism Which you mentioned earlier on douglas was very opposed to the idea of colonization Throughout his entire life And for several reasons there was efforts to colonize blacks to Africa or to central or south america To get them out of the united states and whites favored this as a way of solving the slavery problem Now, of course, it was absurd just as a practical matter. There's just too many people. You couldn't possibly do it It was horrendous as a humanitarian matter. These are people who had never been to africa their parents and grandparents had never been to africa in many of their cases and as douglas said All this native land talk is nonsense. The native land of the american negro is america For generations. He has lived and worked and died on american soil So douglas was opposed to that But there were also colonization efforts led by black americans themselves including Close associates of douglas martin delaney who worked with him on his newspaper for a while, for instance And douglas was firmly opposed to it from whatever source throughout his entire life And I think he may have seen the exodus or movement to kansas as being a sort of miniature form of colonization He said we're here to stay Our destinies are twined together on the north american continent And this notion of moving somewhere else is a cruel fantasy that will not accomplish liberty for anyone Now I always like to wonder Gee, what would what would have happened if there had been a Haitian revolution like event in the deep south And there was actually a black nation state there in say florida, alabama, georgia, whatever if there was a Crescent in north america that was carved out for a black nation state as a result of a massive slave uprising How different might you know American national history be uh at this point. Well, that was of course, john brown's great dream That was that was basically what what john brown hoped to accomplish with his his uprising And douglas, although he thought brown's efforts at harpers ferry were suicidal and foolish and refused to join them Nevertheless douglas spent the rest of his life Lionizing brown and regarded him as among the greatest americans to ever live Why why exactly do you think it was important to write this book now? And what do you think your big contribution is because I I also wonder In the end or at least up to this point in the story our point, uh Has douglas's version of a colorblind constitutional republicanism Has that one out or is the united states really still Fundamentally a white supremacist society It absolutely is not fundamentally a white supremacist society and never has been the essence of america is the declaration of independence's promise And its recognition that all men are created equal and if douglas teaches us nothing else It's that uh, I think it's a a terrible shame That in today's society we are seeing leading black intellectuals being celebrated for their claim their false And degrading claim that the united states is a white supremacist nation And that the promise of the american dream is a falsehood that's been foisted on black americans In order to blind them to that reality that that that idea is being given respectability in high cultural Corners of our nation today is a disgrace and a betrayal of the countless black americans who Gave their lives liberties and their sacred honor To ensure the vindication Of the promissory note that is the declaration of independence and I I would hope That douglas would be celebrated as a great example of why it is such a falsehood I think it's a shame and I I can't denounce it more strongly strongly enough now Whether we've accomplished a colorblind society obviously we haven't and we never will it never will happen and the reason why is because Racism just is always going to be with us in some form or another because people Sometimes are jerks. That's just the fact of the matter And what we can do what we can hope to do is to create a society which respects individual liberty and protects people's rights and then Build a better society gradually that that shuns such notions but there's always going to be yahoos And cruel people out there and I think douglas would have recognized that fact But I think I'm often asked what would douglas think if you were to come around if you were to come back to life today and I I usually have two answers to that the on one hand the the the good thing douglas would be So happy. I think the primary thing he would be thrilled about is the degree to which Interracial marriage is accepted in today's society that it really Yeah, there's some backwoods corners where interracial couples are still looked down upon But almost entirely in the united states. It's regarded as just not a big deal And that is completely opposite from what it was in douglas's own lifetime He himself married a white woman toward the end of his life Which was a shocking thing to do for somebody in the 1880s And I think he would be really happy to see how much we've progressed. We have made in that regard I think what he would be really upset about most upset about I suspect would be the way in which the unconstitutional immoral unwinnable war on drugs Has in many ways perpetuated the same kind of cruelties That he saw in slavery in his own day And he would be he would be he would shake his head sadly at the way that that mimics The the darker moments of our past Well, that is perhaps some stern medicine But really that's what all good history represents a stern check on our assumed facts views perspectives Was douglas really purely self-made? Obviously not, but that isn't the point Has america always been a white supremacist society? Well, perhaps But what about that century or so before race even existed? Douglas reaches across into our own time and challenges us Always do your own thinking Liberty Chronicles is a project of libertarianism.org It is produced by test terrible if you've enjoyed this episode of liberty chronicles Please rate review and subscribe to us on itunes for more information on liberty chronicles visit libertarianism.org