It's tough because the Founding Fathers are really a mixed bag of good and bad. You can hold them up for their belief that the Church has no place in government but then you have the stuff like slavery, as well. it's a bit more complex than that. people have to remember that the founding fathers lived in a time of profound ignorance about the world. they had no idea what was coming. thomas jefferson used to debate with a paleontologist about how the sea shells got so high up in the mountains. now it's no mystery.
the original constitution did strike out slavery. but jefferson had to nix it to get the support of some of the states. thomas paine, who many consider to be the spiritual author of the declaration, and who the right wings NEVER quote because he thought monotheism was a joke, WAS against slavery. after the louisiana purchase, he went to jefferson and urged him not to send any slaves to the west. "we can begin anew. we've doubled the size of the nation, at ten cents an acre at that. don't send any slaves, mr. president. instead send some thrifty germans. they'll make the land bloom." alas, jefferson was in such a hurry to get the cotton cut that he didn't listen, and so he gifted to the next generation a country that was half emancipated, half-slave, which meant there was going to be a terrible war.
our minds WANT to say that everything is black and white. alas it's not true.
the one thing that can be said is that we can be grateful to live in a time with all this media. no information is ever really lost over the internet. in the 1970s, there was a TV commercial where the mormon elders actually came on to say they had gotten a revelation from god that blacks were human after all. until about 1979, you could not be black and serve as a deacon in the mormon church. the church had to change with the tide of civil rights or face humiliation--unless one really believes they really got a revelation from the divine. just think. if only youtube had been available then. the whole LGBT community could have been spared the mess of prop 8 merely by flashing that commercial on TV and reminding the country of the stunning hypocrisy.
at least now, all these images of palin, the unctuous smiles of gallagher, perkins, huckabee, wright, and all the other bigots who claim a divine warrant for their bigotry have been captured for all posterity. 100 years from now, when it's all a non-issues, children will stare agape at their visages and wonder how people could ever have behaved this way, and that will be their legacy.
Updated On: 8/6/12 at 04:32 AM
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