Are Conservatives the New Snowflakes?

Slave owners tried very hard to justify themselves. In the early years of the 19th century, wave after wave of preposterous pseudoscience was published to help them rationalize what was obviously wrong but incredibly profitable. Soon, speech criticizing slavery was policed. Books were banned; possession of some, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were criminalized. Newspaper owners were targeted, their presses thrown into the river. Abolitionists were lynched and driven from the South. Slave owners’ sublimated guilt was so fragile that they needed soft and hard power—indeed, the entire force of culture and government—to maintain the specious lie that slavery was not only not bad, it was right.Slave owners tried very hard to justify themselves. In the early years of the 19th century, wave after wave of preposterous pseudoscience was published to help them rationalize what was obviously wrong but incredibly profitable. Soon, speech criticizing slavery was policed. Books were banned; possession of some, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were criminalized. Newspaper owners were targeted, their presses thrown into the river. Abolitionists were lynched and driven from the South. Slave owners’ sublimated guilt was so fragile that they needed soft and hard power—indeed, the entire force of culture and government—to maintain the specious lie that slavery was not only not bad, it was right.