P.C. liberals are more than three-fifths dumb

From Robert Weissberg:

Like many readers I recently encountered the sad tale of how James W. Wagner, President of Emory University, had to apologize for praising the Constitution’s three-fifths compromise (treating slaves as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation). 

A letter to Wagner from the Department of History and African American studies called his analysis “an insult to the descendants of those enslaved people who are today a vital part of the Emory University community and our nation.” 

Wagner’s apology, “To those hurt or confused by my clumsiness and insensitivity, please forgive me,” closely resembles a Soviet-era show trial where the already guilty defendant tries to save himself with a self-humiliating confession. 

Alas, this self-degradation is apparently insufficient and the College of Arts and Sciences faculty has formally censured president Wagner. Perhaps like Soviet show trial victims, he should immediately confess even more grievous sins so the faculty will spare his family.

Wagner was accused by the p.c. police of denigrating blacks by endorsing the legal concept that slaves were only three-fifths of a human being for the purpose of apportionment in the Constitution.

Nonsense.

It is the liberal inquisitors, not President Wagner, who take the slave owners' side in the argument.

The question facing the Consitutional Convention was: how do we account for slaves in the apportionment of representation on the House of Representatives? Northern abolitionist states insisted that apportionment of political power in the House be according only to the free population in states. They argued that it was immoral to count slaves for purposes of apportionment, because that would mean that the slaves-- who were not free to participate in the political process-- would add to the political power of their slave owners.

The Northern abolitionists' argument was that States should get votes in the House only in accordance with the number of citizens that they allow to freely participate in the electoral process. The Northern abolitionists wanted to reduce the power of the slave states, in order ultimately to eradicate slavery.

The Southern slave-owning states wanted slaves counted the same as free men, so the slave owners would benefit from the increased representation in the House of Representatives without having to allow slaves to participate in the electoral process. Counting slaves as free men for the purpose of apportionment would have greatly increased the power of the slave states in Congress. 

The three-fifths compromise allowed the Union to form, while giving the Southern slave-owning states as little legislative power as possible. 

The Constitutional apportionment of slaves as less than free men was part of an effort to abolish, not expand, slavery. 

The culpable ignorance of the politically correct prosecutors of this show trial is jaw-dropping. The little stalins of today's p.c. police, in their fervor to prosecute heresy, in fact make the slave-owners argument. Counting slaves as full citizens for the purposes of apportionment, while denying them political participation, would have enormously empowered the slave-owners. The purpose of the Northern abolitionists for not counting slaves (or for counting them as less than free men for the purpose of apportionment) was to fight slavery. 

The p.c. police-- including faculty who have a professional responsibility to know the facts in this matter, accuse the President of Emory University of racial insensivity, while at the same time idiotically making the argument that the slave owners made. 

Goodness gracious I can't stand liberals.