[zepto]

This has been true of all governments of all kinds thoughout all of time.

Once again, it’s something America can only be criticized for because the goal is for it to be something different.

It’s fair to criticize America for not living up to its ideals.

It’s intellectually dishonest to imply that the ideals don’t exist.

[sangnoir]

I'm having trouble understanding, the tone sounds like it's a rebuttal to my comment, but the words appear to agree with me, maybe?

My entire point was that a lot of disappointment stems from America failing to live up to its ideals[1], and the people who thought they were (or deserve to be) in the in-group, are dismayed to find out they are in the out-group.

1. I'll hasten to add that those ideals are often retconned. "We the people" didn't mean all people (by today's standards). See Dred Scott.

[zepto]

I think it is a rebuttal.

You talk about it being public knowledge that there is an ‘asterisk’ by ‘we the people’, as if slavery was some secret.

Also how does Dred Scott support this innuendo?

There was nothing secret about the ideals, and nothing secret about slavery, and nobody was surprised to find that slaves weren’t considered to be citizens. This discrepancy was a source of some public disagreements.

The retconning is the idea that the ideals were somehow a fraud, rather than an extraordinary step forward at a time that was far more brutal than today, and that people had to work hard to try to establish the ideals as more than just words on paper.

[sangnoir]

> You talk about it being public knowledge that there is an ‘asterisk’ by ‘we the people’, as if slavery was some secret

This sentence is logically inconsistent. Slavery was no secret that is why it is public knowledge that people have been treated unequally from the very beginning.

I have been very explicit - no innuendo. The Dred Scott ruling cemented that people like Dred were not considered citizens.

[zepto]

Right, but there was never an asterisk. There was slavery, and a set of ideals which were ultimately incompatible with it, and a bunch of people who wanted to keep profiting from it.

No asterisks. Just a disagreement which was settled by a war.

[sangnoir]

> Just a disagreement which was settled by a war.

This brushes over a lot history - there barely was an abolitionist movement when the constitution was written, and you missed the 3/5 compromise (and compromise means there's agreement). "We the people*" was definitely asterisked with "Slaves excluded", and updated a little later - with consent of northern states - to "slaves are 3/5ths people"

[zepto]

It wasn’t asterisked with anything. Slaves were excluded.

Compromise doesn’t mean people ‘agree’ on some truth. You can twist language to make the claim that everyone agreed with slavery, but that is clearly a dishonest claim.