On a skim of the article I didn't see mentioned: he once briefly kidnapped the young son of a slave owner to prove a point about stealing people from their parents. Also he was a pretty decent early feminist. Also he refused to ride horses because they were treated cruelly. And he also didn't eat meat! Dude would've fit in pretty well around here probably.
If anyone wants more cool Quaker content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Universal_Friend
People here would call him an adventurist and say he wasn't doing enough like they did Aaron Bushnell
They also had a pretty high hit rate of being the most exploitative and mean factory owners in England which Marx is quite delighted to point out the hypocrisy of. Remember your religion and your professed values don’t make you a good or bad person, your actions do.
I've always wondered wether the slur "poof" came from the PUF
I really doubt it, but I'm definitely going to start asserting this lol
Love learning that 'it was a different time' has and was always a deflection of how awful people have been throughout history and that I can and should apply lessons learned in this day and age to the past.
If I manage to have children, I'm going to be a lib teachers nightmare by giving my kids ammo like this, showing that while uncommon, it wasn't unheard of for decent people throughout history to call out the bullshit.
Yep. Always taught this or that was the norm and yada yada yada. Like I get that, but we were never taught anything like this, perhaps out of ignorance because whatever they were taught excluded numerous progressive figures, or imo, didn't want to teach about those who challenge the status quo, unless they're sufficiently whitewashed and defanged.
Yep, it's a position that requires the person saying it to deny the humanity and agency of the actual people who are most affected
Multiple founding fathers were abolitionists. IIRC Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Payne were the main advocates against slavery in the constitution (some were even against the 3/5ths compromise).
The debate over the morality stretches back to ancient Greece. Spartans and Athenians would argue over it. We've always known it was wrong, but some people want to own slaves anyway and have to bend over backwards to justify it.
Hearing about people like him and John Brown restores my faith in humanity a bit.
The Dollop did a great episode on him, for anyone who wants to know more about him.
Ben Lay was goblin mode. Ben Lay was the dirtbag left of his time. Ben Lay was morally unbesmirched.
