The history Rick alludes to with his understated phrase “great efforts” demonstrated that the wickedness of America is not irreducible. We lost hundreds of thousands of lives in the Civil War in an attempt to reduce it–after all the three-fifths compromises, Missouri compromises, and other efforts–and I join the historical consensus in believing that we did, in fact, reduce it. There will always be, sad to say, a certain level of wickedness in man (this side of the eschaton, at least), and our country is not immune to this. Indeed, the fact that certain political actors in recent history have abused the history of slavery to advance shallow, unwise, and narrow-minded agendas is only yet another proof that an original sin (in our country’s case, slavery) can have very far-reaching consequences.

Reading Rick’s comments, and those of a number of e-mailers, I think that a given writer’s level of heat on this issue is directly proportional to the amount of time that writer has spent arguing with race demagogues. I tend to live a sheltered life in this regard, avoiding the latter sort of folk, so I am rarely called upon to defend the character of the Founders on the three-fifths issue. So let me state my view as clearly as possible: I know they played a bad hand as best they could, and give them all due credit. But I’m sure no one will now deny that, on this issue, it was a bad hand they were playing–and that the three-fifths clause stands as a reminder that flaws can remain in even the most remarkable achievements of human ingenuity.