Frederick Douglass promoted imperialism, was anti-catholic, promoted hunting whales
It’s tempting to point out flaws of people like Thomas Jefferson, who spoke eloquently about freedom but didn’t practice it in his own life as a slaveholder and racist, to discredit them.
George Washington only freed his slaves in his will, not while he lived.
Gandhi did odd things regarding his chastity, like sleeping naked with young girls.
Mother Teresa let helpless people suffer she could have helped and called it beautiful.
I point out some of these flaws in my upcoming book since I write about Jefferson and Washington.
Among people who point out these flaws in people with power, they rarely look so deeply at everyone. I don’t point out Frederick Douglass’s flaws in my book. I wasn’t hiding them. They didn’t come up, though Jefferson’s did, but if I pointed them out about Jefferson, maybe I should have with Douglass too, to point out anyone can poke holes in anyone’s credibility.
I didn’t look for the following. I just came across them reading about him, but he was imperialist, racist, and anticatholic, including while he held government power. I’m not apologizing for him nor accusing him, just pointing out he was as human as anyone else, as were all the people I named above.
“Douglass was also something of an imperialist. He accepted diplomatic positions under Presidents Ulysses S. Grant, in 1871, and Benjamin Harrison, in 1889, that entailed assisting the United States in pressuring Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) to allow itself to become annexed and Haiti to cede territory.” From The Confounding Truth About Frederick Douglass
“When it came to U.S. foreign policy goals, Douglass thought U.S. imperialism was beneficial and believed in the righteous, exceptional character of U.S. power. Indeed, Douglass was more than sympathetic to U.S. expansion and the “extension of American power and influence” in the Caribbean and elsewhere. He had supported the annexation of Santo Domingo in the 1870s and applauded attempts to secure the Dominican Republic’s Samana Bay by the United States for military purposes. Douglass lashed out at those who saw him as somehow subverting U.S. foreign policy goals, stating that he had understood the importance of U.S. dominance in the Caribbean long before his critics ‘were in their petticoats.'” from Frederick Douglass and American Empire in Haiti by National African American Reparations Commission.
On Catholics in Rome: saddened “that they are being trained to defend dogmas and superstitions contrary to the progress and enlightenment of the age.”
“The immediate, and it may be the main cause of the extreme poverty and beggary in Ireland, is intemperance. This may be seen in the fact that most beggars drink whiskey…Drunkenness is still rife in Ireland. The temperance cause has done much—is doing much—but there is much more to do, and, as yet, comparatively few to do it.”
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