The Founding Fathers were hypocrites?
OK, by your 20th/21st century standards, I can see how one might think that. One who doesn't understand history, or the people in it. One who understands only with the understanding of a child, who has not yet learned that instant gratification is not possible in every case. And as I reflect on this, it is exactly the same degree of understanding as Obama's reverend. Completely different in detail, but the same in overall principle.
Since things are not all sweetness and light right now (or at any selected point in the past) it must be bad, it must be evil, and someone is responsible. Yes, someone is always responsible for injustice and for evil, but it is important to ensure that one only blames those actually responsible.
By the standards of their day, our Founding Fathers were radicals, visionaries to us, and irresponsible nutcases to others. But one thing they understood, that change was needed. And that that change would not all happen at once or even in their lifetimes, or perhaps even their children's children's lifetimes. And yet they pledged their fortunes, their lives, and their sacred honor to the ideal they wrote in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. You can say they were hypocrites for owning slaves, and for not granting women equal rights, and had they been gods, with the power to change everything at once, and chose not to, then you would be right.
But they were not gods. They were men. Men born and raised in a society where the "proper" social order was wealthy/noble men on top, and everyone else below them, in descending order. Where all men without wealth and social station were either considered property or barely above it. And women were property in all but name. And this situation had been the norm and the expected basis of society for hundreds, even thousands of years.
Do you have any concept of how great a radical change their ideas represented? And how great the social pressure against it actually was? Glossed over (if even mentioned) in modern school, the fact is that there was a large segment of the colonial population who were not in favor of the entire concept of personal liberty. They talk about the Tories, who did not want us to separate from English rule, but seldom even mention that the concept of freedom and equality for all was also not supported by everyone. Public schools don't go into that deeply, if at all. Many don't even bother to teach that only about a third of colonists supported the Revolution. Another third supported English rule, and the rest just wanted to be left alone to live their lives the best they could. Because our Revolution was successful, we look back and believe that except for the Tories, of course everyone would have been in favor of it. But that is not the actual history.
Our Founding Fathers managed to start a nation, based on legal principles that for the first time in man's history had something else at their core other than might makes right. European society had been heading that way since the dark ages, but had basically stopped at the level of kings, nobles, and everyone else, with everyone else being further broken down into levels ending with women, serfs and slaves.
Men don't change easily, unless they see it to be to their advantage, and sometimes not even then. To denigrate our Founding Fathers because they were unable to cure all the injustices in the new nation in one fell swoop is not only unfair, it plays directly to the ideals of the America haters. Calling our founders hypocrites because they did not do everything you think they ought to have done just shows you have drunk the haters kool-aid. You may not be completely poisoned yet, but you are heading that way.
The America haters in America blame America (all of it, except themselves) not only for all the bad things we have done in the past, but also for the failure of America to right all wrongs and make the world a paradise.
Social consciousness is a wonderful thing, but it did not spring into being overnight, it has developed over centuries. And does not exist in many of the world's people even today. Rather than berate people of past eras for not being as enlightened as we are today, you should look at those individuals, like our Founding Fathers, who moved social enlightenment further along than anyone previously, and built the foundation for others to add to that has gotten us to the level we have today. The road has been long, and not without potholes and dead ends, and we still have a long way to go before it ends. Don't be like the haters who focus only on America's past mistakes, but rather focus on the fact that America is the best path forward.
We will make mistakes in the future, just as we do now, but instead of hating ourselves because we make mistakes, shouldn't we take pride in the fact that we don't let our mistakes stop us, and we continue to move forward, towards the goals of full equality, of liberty and justice for all? I think we should.
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