Again, you are framing their words in your mind today and ignoring the context they were written. For instance, “all men are created equal” was intended to give all white males a shot at “equality” in reference to hereditary white aristocracy, not people of other colors. We have revised that to mean literally everyone.
How many quotes of the Founding Fathers would it take for you to admit that there were a non-negligible number of them who believed in the Enlightenment ideals that were expressed in our founding documents? 5? 10? 100? Perhaps there is no number sufficient, and your mind is made up regardless of evidence. If that’s the case, it would be very helpful for you to state as much now.
You offer up quotes to prove how great they were but in the next breath say they were flawed while using those quotes as a rebuttal to my statement pointing out that these men were flawed.
Men can be great and flawed. Men can champion great ideals and be flawed. I don’t know why that’s so troubling to you?
Please read about these people,
Jesus, fuck. You think I haven’t?
The problem here is you’re fighting a battle that doesn’t need to be fought. Nobody here is contesting the effect they had on the formation of this country, yet for some reason you want to argue that point.
My point is that they were flawed, and that we have revised some of their motives and framing to suit both grade-school level and adult levels of patriotism and worship of the people at the helm of the country’s beginnings. People don’t want to hear that, and it sounds like you’re in the same boat. I’m sorry if that’s something you’ve decided you don’t want to discuss but would rather hyper focus on their successes like some kind of founding father Facebook page. You’re making this argument about your views. It was never about you. If you’ve read everything, good for you. Move on.
Feel free to pile on some quotes if it helps you look the other way.
Edit: welp. People like their sugar-coated history. Too bad. It’s amazing how far we’ve come and adapted over time to make things better for everyone rather than “just white males get to vote”; but nobody wants to hear about why we started out that way when a bunch of white males wrote the rules?
Nobody here is contesting the effect they had on the formation of this country, yet for some reason you want to argue that point.
No, the point I’m arguing is against you here:
Those “ideals” revolved around landed white males
Feel free to pile on some quotes if it helps you look the other way.
Sorry that actual primary source evidence doesn’t mean anything to you?
“By saying all men were “created equal” Thomas Jefferson intended to abolish the system of hereditary aristocracy, where some individuals were born as lords and others were ordinary.”
Ok. Landed white male aristocracy.
Then there was black people not getting to vote.
Women couldn’t vote.
If you didn’t have enough property you couldn’t vote.
Native Americans weren’t citizens until the 1900s. Don’t forget the awful treatment and suffering they received at the hands of Jackson.
Let’s not bother discussing how long many of the founders owned slaves, despite their “enlightenment”, and how long it took them to free them. If they did.
That’s just off the top of my head. Sure seems like landed white males were still top of the heap as far as the founders went.
E: that’s framing for you. A bunch of (often rich) white guys wrote the rules for white males to still be in charge. Enlightened or not, that’s how the country started. We have improved on their work in many ways, but as I stated originally, we need to take the shiny veneer off and look at who they were and what they really did. None of this is untrue.
