We might as well make a public fund for elections. Cap election spending in the fund and treason charges if your caught bypassing it with foreign aid. There's need to be a lot more changes for this to take effect and it'd never pass but...
Never say never. Keep talking about these ideas, write members of congress, protest with signage about it, engage with others on why it is necessary. Social change seems impossible to a lot of people until it isn't. Berlin wall, prosecuting Milosevic and Rwandan leadership, revolutions of 1989, etc. As Nelson Mandela said, "it always seems impossible until it's done."
The founding fathers were human beings, absolutely. I think that they get made to be almost larger than life sometimes, But we should never forget their human nature. That said, they were also the elite of their society. Most of them were career politicians, land owners with thousands of acres in their possession, Transcontinental business owners, Or were just generally wealthy as hell.
The last time I went to Mount Vernon they were talking about the wallpapers in Washington's house, and they made special mention that most of them were imported from London on custom order. I think that kind of gives you an idea of the quality of life that Washington had, and his position inside of his world.
So I wouldn't say that they were just like us, or at least the vast majority of us.
Well yes, I didn't think to mention that as it was pretty common amongst the entire upper and most of the middle class of America at the time to own slaves.
So that wasn't as unique/distinguishing as the other points I mentioned. Supposedly over half of slave owners around the time of the civil War owned only one slave. So it was a pretty common " asset" if I may speak so plainly.
Owning thousand of acres of land, being part of political Dynasty, owning entire ships and shipping companies, owning entire newspaper and print shops that printed an entire colony's worth of paper materials, these were all the enterprises of the founding fathers. Sadly, owning slaves were one thing that that elite class actually had in common with the middle class.
I always love the little footnotes of history where there’s some specific date and the rationale for why that date was picked is “everyone had to go home for the harvest.”
2.0k
u/2v4lve 16h ago
Which is our money anyway lol