“On the Founding Enslavers”,
They say: The Founding Fathers are our greatest historical example, and our government should live up to them. I say: That’s bull.
Since when was raping a slave over years and having six children with her a “great historical example”? Thomas Jefferson did it with Sally Hemings. The same man who took out the condemnation of slavery in the Declaration of Independence because the Southern slaves would throw a hissy fit.
Since when was owning hundreds of slaves throughout your life, while expressing that no, slavery’s actually a terrible institution and it must be eliminated in Our Great Nation, a “great historical example”? George Washington did it, and morally he was probably one of the better examples because he freed his slaves in his will.
Some others like James Madison owned slaves; others didn’t. None called for slavery to be outlawed which makes them all unintelligent (the specific combination of lack of smartness and lack of sensibility) and idiotic in my book regardless of their contribution (which became the single most genocidal country in history through its invention of nukes). I refuse to dignify them by referring to them as the mythic name “Founding Fathers”, because that would imply that either they were moral father figures to the United States (which they were not) or that they were father figures in the paternalistic sense (which they were not); it’s also a vague term overused by politicians to communicate something everybody recognises but nobody knows.
Dr. Samuel Johnson asked “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?” The average public school teacher can’t answer that; not because of their own personal failures—at least, not entirely—but because it would contradict what they’re made to teach. ♦