The thing we need to focus on about the Founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed

But we can’t actually talk about the nature of that social structure, can we? Because that might actually lead some kids to believe our Founding Fathers were, I don’t know, human?

We don’t talk/study/learn enough about the realities of slavery in this country, and I think that is a horrible shame. During the recent MLK Holiday, WETA in DC re-ran “African-American Lives” the TV show where Skip Gates examines the geneological and genetic history of famous African-Americans. The stories that emerged were fascinating, in part because of the variety of experience even within a brutal institution like slavery. The existence of slave-owning abolitionists, for instance, was utterly fascinating, as was the case of the free black ancestors of one of the guests. This family had been ordered to leave Virginia after their Emancipation (in the late 1700s), but refused. The family must have been protected by the local white leaders in their community (who had signed onto the family’s petition to stay in the Commonwealthy after Emancipation) in order to allow them to stay on their farm for several years more.

The most fascinating story was the man who only owned one female slave and the children she later produced. He never married, and had two houses next to one another – one for the slave and her children, one for him. It was clear from the record that his was very likely as close to an inter-racial marriage as could be allowed in the pre-Bellum South, and is a story about which it would be amazing to learn more details.

Without studying the details and facts of that “peculiar institution” we lose the full tapestry of our history, and the ways that basic human emotions must have come into conflict with the realities of life in the South. I remember well sitting down to watch “Roots” with my family in the 70s and how, during the course of that mini-series, the story changed, for me, from being a “black” story to being an American story.

this is beyond disgusting

And each and every one of those Founding Fathers who supported and profited from slavery deserve to have their reputations tarnished.

The ff didn’t own slaves in the textbooks I was raised on in the 1950s.

Cowards.

My “favorite” wording in that excerpt – we shall have nothing about the Founders “intruding on the Indians.”
[italics, of course, mine]

O/T. The Freak Show has officially come to town. just saw my first campaign sign. (It was for Newt).

What’s with this guy and “the Founders” bullshit. As Pam points out, SOME of the Founders were slave owners. The future of slavery divided them. It was a MAJOR issue in the earliest days of the country. If that MAJOR isn’t isn’t beimng taught, then history isn’t being taught.

yeah, that’s what I remember learning – how do you explain the “three-fifths compromise” without talking about slavery and north and south?

That said, I can’t remember if we specifically talked about Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et al. owning slaves themselves. I think so, but that might not have been in grade school. I was in grade school not too many years after eCAHN, late fifties, early sixties.

I suppose we’re not allowed to talk about killing Native Americans either. These clowns try to re-write history so that our history isn’t true. What a bunch of idiots.

This isn’t isolated. You also have David Barton of Wallbuilders working on his parallel pseudo-history.

In religion you have BIAFitS (the Big Imaginary Authority Figure in the Sky) who works through holy men (they always seem to be men) and prophets to produce the written Word, which then must be interpreted by a clergy for the benefit of the peasantry.

In a parallel fashion, they want to create a pseudo-history of America in which the same BIAFitS who worked through the Founding Fathers (who are ubermensch (ubermenschen?) and without blemish) to produce the Constitution whose Original Intent must be divined by Conservatives (on the bench and elsewhere).

Thus was America founded by BIAFitS to be the homeland of the white, heterosexual, married with children, capitalist class and the teaming masses of peasants who serve them.

I’m not sure the 3/5 compromise was ever mentioned in either my elementary or secondary U.S. history courses. It must have been by the time I got into HS (early 60s), but the import of my not remembering it is that it was prolly skipped over so quickly (and not on any tests) that I can’t even remember its being covered.

“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.” -William Ralph Inge

“The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.”-Leo Tolstoy

“Patriot: the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”-Mark Twain

“Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy”- George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”- Oscar Wilde

I missed the slavery bit entirely. Was completely brainwashed about it in my youth, when the standard northern line was it was all the fault of those evil southerners.

But somehow I intuitively understood that all Americans stole the land from the Amerindians. I remember being outraged by this at an early age, and am still outraged today bc nothing has changed in 500 years.

The aims of the Founding Fathers were not compatible with what went before them. Obviously there were things that didn’t stop the second they “founded” the USA and drew up the Constitution. They were looking ahead and laying down mandates and principles for us to use as a guide and get things to work in the future. The slaves themselves, in many instances, didn’t know they had been emancipated for about two years after the proclamation was made, so there is no harm in facing reality.
I don’t know how the Tea Party envisions that history will be written if the drive for thermonuclear World War three isn’t arrested immediately.
Worrying about the way the effects of slavery is recorded at this moment in time is a waste of precious energy. Our focus must be upon shutting down the oligarchs once and for all by reinstating Glass Steagall, by passed tHE RETURN TO PRUDENT BANKING Act introduced by Marcy Kaptur D Ohio and then to have Congress to start uttering Credit for worthwhile projects like NAWAPA and NASA. If Obama doesn’t like these suggestions, then he is not a true patriot, and should be served with his pink slip. Under Constitutional Rules of course. No more games.

“My country, right or wrong, is a sure way to get a wrong country.” eCAHNomics

You need to read Zinn.

eCAHN @13

nothing has changed in 500 years

Not quite true. Within the next generation or so, Caucasians will be the minority race in the US due to immigration across the southern border (both legal and illegal) and higher birth rates of Hispanics (primarily Amerindians). Montezuma’s revenge?

This is like the idiotic Conservative Bible Project.

Tea Partiers cannot rest until they go the full-USSR in their quest to revise history according to their own propoganda.

I am around the same age as eCAHN, I can remember some very detailed history about the Civil War, including some pretty detailed info about the institution of slavery, plus the carpetbagging that happened afterwards.

However, yes, that history was “white washed” to make it all about the South doing it, and somehow the North was all so “pure” and not tainted by slavery. Which I did wonder about bc I grew up under American Apartheid, and the North sure didn’t seem all warm ‘n fuzzy for AA’s in those days.

I was definitely NOT taught about Jefferson & his slaves, nor about Sally Hemmings & their kids together. I do believe I was “taught” that Washington had slaves or somehow absorbed that somewhere.

As to the Native Americans: I did get some teaching along the line about the white genocide of Indians, which contradicted most/all film-making of the 1950s/60s (John Wayne he-man mostly junk). In particular, somewhere along the line, was taught about the disease-infested blankets given to Indians, the Trail of Tears whereby the Cherokee were forced out of their lands and marched to death to other places.

So somehow, despite insane American exceptionalism & so-called “manifest destingy” being the propoganda du jour, I did learn a few hard truths.

Utterly unsurprised at the depraved, delusional shit that these Tea Buggers are doing in TN… just like the re-writing of history in TX school books.

Load of unsurpassed bullshit.

“the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy.”

Not to gloss over the pernicious nature of revisionism and the true intent of these idiots, but isn’t the above statement true? The system created by the FF was a gov’t led by elected men. Blacks, servants, women, and Indians were not represented.

You overestimate power of demographics. Just as 99ers don’t matter, neither does any other majority you might care to focus on.

RWMs were small minority in some southern colonies/states in the 1700s-1800s. Only made their push to marginalize blacks stronger, out of fear they would combine with poor whites against them.

Blacks, servants, women, and Indians were not represented.

Bingo! And many of today’s conservatives, esp the 1%, would love nothing more than to go back to those halcyon days.

You left out on-property owners, who were also not represented.

The RWMs in govt weren’t elected either. Don’t forget electoral college & appointment of senators.

I should have said “Slaves”, not blacks, since I’m not sure whether or not free blacks could vote. Also, women had to pay taxes even though they couldn’t vote.

I stand corrected. I was simply referring to demographics, not political influence. A 60% Hispanic population will still be ruled by the same 1% WM clique.

Good point. I knew this was the case before the constitution, but wasn’t sure about after it. Thanks. I wonder when this changed.

RWM? right wing maniac?

on edit: rich white men?

Rich White Males.

Though yours works too.

Thanks.

And a special thanks to you for inspiring me to read Zinn’s People’s History of the U.S. It’s a page turner

You might call me a Zinn pimp (well, pimpette). It’s the book I’ve been looking for for decades. The only one that I’ve read that has ever made sense out of U.S. history. With one possible exception (heh). A book about American exceptionalism published in 1935 that I read in 2009.

A great book is “George Washington And His Slaves”.

Another great read is a collection of essays by the much maligned and ridiculed Ward Churchill called “A Little Matter OF Genocide”.

Yeah, PTB made mince meat out of Ward Churchill in no time flat.

Re: The Founding Of The USA

Firstly, the Indians were tortured, murdered, enslaved and given starvation rations whereby they were literally worked and starved to death.

When the African Slaves were brought in, they were novelties and treated better at first.

Perhaps the Teabaggers could use this bit of historical info to their advantage.

The number of Native Americans said to have inhabited North and South America has – in history book texts – been downplayed by a thousand percent.

The Smithsonian was shamed into upgrading its figure to 100,000 savages.

In reality, there were at least one million untermenschen.

Didn’t they though? Made a complete mockery of the dude. The truth will get you smeared.

The sudden desire to distinguish between a Republic and Democracy is to tie Republican to the ideas of the Founding Fathers. It is the next logical step after successfully morphing the Democratic Party to the Democrat Party. The insidious motivation is to argue that since we’re not Democracy, we don’t require the one person, one vote standard.

“The thing we need to focus on about the Founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed, to everybody — not all equally instantly — and it was their progress that we need to look at,”

So the Tea Baggers are Progressives?

But the best bit of ahistorical perspective is, “revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn’t existed.” Tell that to the Indians upon whom the Founders did not intrude. Indeed, some of the Founders’ ideas about freedom and democracy they did not bring with them but learned from the folks who were already there.

And malleable history? In this recent ideological effort, the Tea Baggers prove to be greater relativists than the Post-Modern historians who they imagine have spoiled their “patriotic” mythology.

Thanks for the great quotes!

Contribution: “”Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” –Albert Einstein

Tennessee–another member of the “Old Confederacy”, with their racist “states rights” and “The South Shall Rise Again” mindset. In none of these states did the Civil War actually settle the issue. Gingrich and the rest of the right wing Republicans fit right into this crowd. His President Andrew Jackson accolade was a dog whistle to this bunch because of Jackson’s treatment of the Cherokee in defiance of a Supreme Court decision. The hate is passed from generation to generation.

Just taking the post at face value, these TPartiers are a really disgusting bunch of MF’s. They’re not stupid, obviously, but truly disgraceful. Please, someone, show me the mitigating evidence.

The Founders included slave owners. Denying that does not change the facts.
To attempt to contend they were perfect is to fly in the face of reality. To contend this nation did no harm to the resident peoples is absurd.
Lest any one forget the attitude of 19th Century America, the Congress awarded 20 Medals of Honor for services rendered at the “Battle of Wounded Knee.”
Read the accounts of the “action.”
If they don’t turn your stomach, may you be forgiven.

One of the neglected aspects of these efforts at a peculiar lionization of the founding fathers, is that by focusing on the leaders, the role of the citizenry is at best marginalized. Was it only the work of these fathers that founded the country? What does this perspective say about what the Tea Baggers think of democracy, even the representative kind? Their fetishism of leadership is essentially fascist.

An important question here is why these folks prefer an ideological, mythical, authoritarian history versus one that might be more objective, inclusive, complex, and inductive.

Exactly. South Carolina and Georgia flatly refused to sign on with the other colonies on that whole revolution thing unless slavery was allowed — even Virginia was willing to allow it to at least be phased out.

And yes, this is one of the things I need to keep handy to shove in the face of any Republican who denies that racism is at the core of the GOP.

See also: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

The authoritarian, fascistic mindset has trouble with abstractions. They get hung up on physical symbols: flags, eagles, weapons, etc.

Oh yeah, Altemeyer is the best on this subject since Wilhelm Reich. I guess the core question here is what are these Tea Bagger folks so fucking scared of, and what prevents them from addressing their fears? And a question for those who find their authoritarian fetish detrimental might be, what can be done to help them stop being afraid, if anything?

Those liars who wish to obscure important facts will lose. The Tea Party are just such liars and losers.
Our history is never very accurately portrayed, but outright lying about our `first’ citizens is unconscionable.

Interesting;
To accomplish the presentation of history in the sanitized Disney 1950′s version that they propose, you would have to remove both of the Adams men and Abigail Adams from history, along with Dr. Franklin

and Roger Sherman….and ….a bunch of others who supported the anti-slavery clause in the Declaration of Independence that ultimately had to be removed….

These people and their progenitors have been quite successful already. I am not optimistic short of an incredibly educated public (educated by these people) will rise up. Latest here in Georgia. http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/norcross-parents-upset-by-1292851.html?cxtype=rss_news_81960