The Left's intentional ignorance of American history

It has become fashionable among the socialist Left to denigrate the founding of America. A popular theme is that our founders simply did not want to pay more taxes. People think the phrase "no taxation without representation" proves their point. I am sure that as loyal collectivists, they feel that our wealthy founders were not taxed enough. But that notion of no taxation without representation was not invented by the colonial Americans. This was a long established tradition in England, believed to have been extant since the Magna Carta. The colonists considered themselves loyal British citizens and entitled to the same rights as those in the mother country. The Stamp Act that was passed was frankly illegal and was rescinded just four months later. The amount of tax was trivial. But imposing the tax was viewed as an impingement on their rights as British citizens. The right for you and your representative to control the purse of government was part of the rights to freedom. Passing this tax without the consent of those governed was a sign of the potential for removing all of their rights. The intolerable acts that followed and the incompetence and arrogance of King George III fed into the revolt. To put this in perspective, the English constitution at that time had no written form like our later U.S. Constitution. It was all based on legal precedent, and that precedent agreed with the colonists. An equivalent in America today would be if Congress passed a law to eliminate the Bill of Rights. It would be illegal even if signed into law by the president. I would expect every loyal American to rebel.

Another popular meme about America's founding is that it was all based on slavery and racism and that we are still a racist country. People claim that our Constitution is a racist document. This is a common polemic of that ersatz Latino, so-called Beto. This is either willful ignorance or despicable lying: Beto seems to forget that slavery was legal in all of the world at that time, and there were some slaves in all the colonies. By the middle of the 18th century, before the American Revolution, there were as many African slaves in some Southern states as white Europeans. There was also a growing disquiet about this whole institution of bondage. There were as many abolitionist societies in the South as in the North. Our Founders, many of whom had slaves, believed that slavery should be abolished but seemed helpless about how to accomplish this. Many years later, Frederick Douglass, a great orator, abolitionist, and former slave, was asked to condemn the U.S. Constitution as a racist document to satisfy his abolitionist friends. He had by this time visited Europe and seen other governments in action. He read all of the Federalist Papers and all the arguments from the constitutional convention. He also studied the Declaration of Independence. He concluded, much to the chagrin of his benefactors, that our Constitution is an anti-slavery document. It has all the words necessary for the beginning of the end of slavery. Among Douglass's arguments was that no document that wanted to perpetuate slavery would contain language that spelled its doom. The Constitution put a twenty-year limit to the slave trade. He also understood that the document did not relegate slaves as being three fifths human. That was a compromise for apportionment. The South had wanted to count their slaves as citizens for apportionment but as property otherwise. Sadly, we had to undergo a Civil War to abolish slavery. Never forget that England and the United States of America were the first two countries in world history to abolish slavery. So for those naysayers who hate America, we began as a beacon of freedom for the whole world. I would say the socialists among us need a lesson in American history. But I am sure that personal freedom for all Americans is not their goal.