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Rosey's avatar

Thomas Jefferson's "Declaration of Independence" asserting "All men are created equal" and "Endowed with certain unalienable rights" is the greatest vision statement in the history of civilization, IMO. This statement, being aspirational, should be judged by its intentions and direction; its compass heading. Practically no one, certainly no political entity lived it at the time, and judging by today's woke hyper-racist identity politics, the elite refuse to do so today.

Some eighty-five years after the Founders declared this vision, a white majority of northerners defeated the secessionist Confederacy in our Civil War (1861-1865) and settled the question that "men" included emancipated slaves constitutionally. Jefferson's desire to end slavery was finally realized legally.

Some 154 years after the Declaration, the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote perfected this vision to include a political equality for women.

Some two hundred years since Jefferson's vision-cast, we celebrate the legal equality of sexual orientation generally.

We enjoy these masterful freedoms because we sit on Thomas Jefferson's shoulders. His brilliance and genius made our blessings imaginable. The last full measure of many battle-lost lives have purchased the freedom we now enjoy.

So to repudiate Jefferson is simply asinine. It is not hypocritical to aspire to live beyond ones capabilities; it is human. Everyone that lives a life worth living is animated by lofty ideals -- Divine ideals.

The anti-racist woke are, in fact, so hyper-racist they make the antebellum slave owner blush with envy.

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Just me's avatar

"All men are created equal," but not all are treated as equals!

Slavery and Jim Crow concentrated workers of color in chronically undervalued occupations.

New Deal programs helped institutionalize racial disparities in wages and benefits.

The underfunding and limited scope of anti-discrimination agencies perpetuate inequality

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/

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Rosey's avatar

Yet, most Americans by far live integrated, colorblind lives. We have over two generations of integrated armed services, where all races have each other's backs in combat. We've elected a president of color twice, notwithstanding his distain for American exceptionalism. That America is systematically, organically racist is a a grand lie and con and gaslighting fiction.

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jt's avatar

Only capable of YAH!

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