I recently “unliked” a Thomas Jefferson page on FB because the page admin is a rabid, insane, almost violent Obama-hater. He thinks that Obama is THE most anti-Jefferson President this nation has ever had, and he told people (after ranting about Classical Liberalism and Freedom and Independence and all those high-falutin’ words that usually get spit out with the names of the Founding Fathers) who supported Obama to get the fuck off his page. So I did. But I wanted to tell him this:
You know, you have forgotten something. What do Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, Ben Franklin and all those other Founders have in common?
THEY’RE ALL DEAD!!
WE are the USA now. WE are THE PEOPLE now. It’s in OUR hands now, not theirs. THEY are damn well dead and GONE. YOU need to get with the 21st century, dude, and stop living in your 18th century life – but I suppose if you want to live in a world wherein it was legal for one human being to own other human beings and justify it by the color of the other people’s skin, knock yourself out. I don’t want any part of that. If you want to live in an electronics-free world (such as the 18th century was), knock yourself out. If you want to live in a world where women giving birth were, as often as not, taking their lives in their hands, knock yourself out. But I want no part of that. Jefferson himself said that once every 20 years or so we should rip up the Constitution and start anew. We have already done this, sort of, by all the amendments we have added to the original document. We just chose to keep the lion’s share of the original document. So if you want to be a hater in the name of Thomas Jefferson, you’re free to do that. But in the spirit of the freedom of mind that Thomas Jefferson was absolutely passionate about, I too am free – to tell you to have a nice hot cup of shut the fuck up. Over.
The founders were an amazing group of people – but they were not saints. Don’t crank that pedestal you have them on TOO high.
Tagged: history
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