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.
“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.
Jefferson also believed in a 100% inheritance tax, so I’m pretty sure you can remove ‘landed’ and ‘aristocracy’ from the ideals intended there.
Then there was black people not getting to vote.
Each state set its own requirements for voting, and several Founding Fathers were advocates for total legal equality.
Women couldn’t vote.
This is undeniably true. None of the Founding Fathers were feminists.
If you didn’t have enough property you couldn’t vote.
Each state set its own requirements for voting, and a number of states had no property requirements.
Native Americans weren’t citizens until the 1900s. Don’t forget the awful treatment and suffering they received at the hands of Jackson.
Genocide Jackson wasn’t a Founding Father. Citizenship was not automatic for Native Americans until the 1900s due to the strange state of semisovereignity most Native American tribes have.
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.
Yes, let’s not forget the terrible slaver John Jay, who founded the foremost abolitionist movement in the US at the time, or Franklin, who advocated for total integration of white and black populations, or Hamilton, who was instrumental in New York adopting a hard abolitionist stance.
Cherry pick much? You picked exceptions while ignoring the rest. At no point did I use absolutes like “all” founders were idiots or something. Yet you cherry pick and suggest that invalidates my points. Good grief.
Whatever. I’m done. I stand by my point: understand the founders in their time, understand their flaws, understand that we have polished their images while ignoring flaws and context to make them heroic. They were humans. That’s all.
