I love PGs essays, but his take on Robert George is the opposite of what Robert George was saying.
PG: "He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't."
Robert George from the quoted tweet:
"Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it."
"I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery, and worked tirelessly against it."
He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't. And indeed, our default assumption should not merely be that his students would, on average, have behaved the same way people did at the time, but that the ones who are aggressively conventional-minded today would have been aggressively conventional-minded then too. In other words, that they'd not only not have fought against slavery, but that they'd have been among its staunchest defenders.
PG: "He's too polite to say so, but of course they wouldn't."
Robert George from the quoted tweet: "Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it."
https://twitter.com/McCormickProf/status/1278529694355292161
It doesn't change PG's point, but its just odd he used the quote in this way.