Thomas Jefferson (Official Presidential Portrait) Rembrant Peale, 1800 |
With the Black Lives Matter campaign still ongoing in the USA, it's worth taking a quick look at the history of a constitution which allowed slavery for so long and which has left America with a divided society where racism is institutionalised and a white President-reject who relied on racist white supremacists for support, describing them as 'very fine people'. And a very large proportion of the population incensed at the realisation that America now has a black (female!) Vice President, as though having had a black President for 8 years wasn't bad enough!
This also relates to the increasing clamour from the evangelical Christian white supremacists insisting that America is a Christian country, founded as such by the almost saint-like figures of the (White Christian) Founding Fathers.
The truth, as always with these assertions from the extreme right in politics is very different.
The founding document of the American Republic, the Declaration of Independence (DOI), was originally drafted by that deist friend of Thomas Paine and follower of John Locke, the liberal left Humanist, Thomas Jefferson. It included the following passage: