My current professor at class the other day, pointed out this phrase from the Declaration of Independence and similar language from the Founding Fathers in the Constitution were fraudulent yet we still accept them.
He meant that yes, all men are created equal, an idea from the Enlightenment but that certainly didn't mean that all people were created equal.
Sure, sure, sure, but this phrase only applies to white adult English-speaking Christian male property-owners.
That's not everybody, folks.
But what struck me was that, from the earliest time, as a child, these ideals were stressed as the center of America. The land of the free and the brave. The gleaming democracy. The people rule. Everybody has equal rights.
Somehow I accepted, just as I was supposed to, that everybody had equal rights. Except me, mainly because I was a girl, but I was supposed to dismiss that. Especially back in the 1950s and 1960s, girls, well they didn't really mean girls. Because that wasn't the way things worked. But you were supposed to believe it anyway.
Even if you were black.
Even if you were a slave.
Even if you were a Native American.
Even if you were poor.
Even if you were a Jew or a Muslim
Even if you were an "illegal alien", who dreamed up THAT dehumanizing phrase. Sounds like something out of the third reich
In America, the people rule. That's what they taught and I blindly believed it.
As if it really was true. It wasn't true then though I was supposed to suspend judgement.
Now, what do some politicians about treating the Founding Fathers intentions as some gospel truth?
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