The Founding Fathers Were Tyrants

Pay what you can: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% offThe word “tyrant” is a charged one in the United States of America. The deranged activists who insist white supremacists must have access to military-grade weapons for their child slayings insist it’s because “the tyrants are worse.”Somehow, they claim, access to murder weapons is a tyrant counter-measure.The word tyrant is invoked to represent the opposite of freedom. Tyrants are an example of government overreach. They tell you who you can marry. They dictate how much you are paid (if anything). They tell you what you can say. They tell you what you can believe.We’re constantly inundated by warnings against tyrants. “He’s a tyrant! He’s a dictator!” howl incensed pundits on the news. This language is fundamental to our nation. Everyone in this country knows that, when confronted with tyrants, we must respond with rebellion.“Now is our time to follow the example of the Founding Fathers,” the mob cheers.However, what the mob doesn’t know, or what the mob has been conditioned not to recognize, is that the Founding Fathers themselves were tyrants. It’s a simple fact of history that the Founding Fathers owned human beings and imposed upon these human beings a tyrannical control over every aspect of their lives.This is the truth, and the truth is greater than any single person.Defending the Founding Fathers is a cornerstone of racismYou’re supposed to have freedom in America, but you’re not allowed to have an honest conversation about the crimes of the Founding Fathers. When you bring up the various atrocities committed by Washington and Jefferson, the mob instinctively begins to ready themselves for battle.“How dare you disrespect the founding fathers!”“But you haven’t heard me out.”“I don’t need to hear you out! You clearly hate America. Therefore I hate you! In fact, you’re probably a tyrant yourself! That gives me the right to murder you!”Now they’ve invoked the code word which turns them into the Winter soldier. They become nothing more than an instrument designed to inflict pain. Patriotism is the control. Tell me, how does that voluntary submission to external control represent “personal liberty?”Our society has not evolved to the point where we can make a fair assessment of the Founding Fathers. In fact, I think it has deliberately devolved. Today, the only “acceptable” interpretation of the Founding Fathers is to deify them. We’ve turned them into idols and we worship them. This violates at least two of the Ten Commandments, proving once again that even though politicians want to shove that list into schools, few people actually read it.Too often, words aren’t worth the paper (or stone tablet) they’re written on.Sticks and stones…Patriotism is a sacred concept which is leveraged to radicalize people. There’s a very clear mechanism for turning otherwise passive human beings into tools of violence. Nefarious forces know it well and implement it to this day.“Who are you to criticize Thomas Jefferson? You’re so ungrateful! None of the freedoms you have today would exist without him! He’s a giant of history and you’re a gnat. How dare you think you can find fault with him?”Oh really? The idea of “freedom” is something Jefferson invented? So, nowhere else in the world would people aspire to say what they want and marry who they love if it hadn’t been for Jefferson?When you start talking like this, people put themselves in a trance by repeating, “You can’t criticize the Founding Fathers” as if it is some fundamental law of the universe.It’s not.The Founding Fathers deserve to be criticized. They weren’t gods, they were human beings that made terrible mistakes. Once we remove the lie of the Founding Fathers’ infallibility, we gain a clearer perspective of history.The Founding Fathers owned slaves. That means they indulged in tyrannical rule over their slaves. This isn’t a point of debate. It’s a simple fact, and nobody has any right to deny or object to this fact.The Founding Fathers were tyrants. The Founding Fathers were tyrants. The Founding Fathers were tyrants. It’s a fact. If it causes you distress to hear that, take it up with the universe.“You can’t impose the morals of today on the past…”Listen, we could spend all day addressing all the absurd arguments that people are going to drudge up if you begin to offer valid criticisms of the Founding Fathers. This is how the social conversation on racism always plays out.* Those who defend racism deflect* Those who defend racism deny* Those who defend racism distract* Those who defend racism become hostile* Those who defend racism attempt to create confusionThis mechanism is so well-oiled and well-established that even anti-racism advocates slip into the dance without conscious awareness.“Well, if you say the Founding Fathers were tyrants, the members of the radical right are going to take that as…”“I DON’T CARE how the radicals in our society are going to attempt to contort and manipulate and deliberately misinterpret my words. I have no control over them. What they do is their problem. I’m not responsible for the deliberate acts of evil committed by the people who poison everything around them due to the malice in their hearts.”American society needs to be able to denounce all slaveholders in historyThe American public needs to rewire its collective brain. The way you think about things now is all messed up. Deep down, you know it’s messed up, and the fact that you know it’s messed up but continues to act in accordance with what’s expected of you causes you distress.If you simply admit to yourself that the Founding Fathers were tyrants, you’ll feel a calm settle over you. After that, you can reevaluate everything you know about history without a fundamental distortion of fact at the foundation.We all know in our hearts that a single act of evil can render invalid all your works of good. For example, a year ago in my community, a 10-year-old girl was raped and murdered. This is a contemporary example so there haven’t been hundreds of years of brainwashing to taint anyone’s interpretation of this event.Absolutely nobody is saying of the accused, “Well, let’s not let the one bad thing he did cloud our assessment of the rest of his life.”Nobody’s saying that because that statement is disgusting.Yet, the Founding Fathers, through their participation as slave owners, committed equivalent acts of evil.The human mind simply cannot handle the deification and reverence of a person that they know to have indulged in awful abuses of human rights. This is why this kind of thing is prohibited by the Ten Commandments. It breaks your psyche. This kind of psychological abuse leads to further acts of oppression and tyranny.It shouldn’t be controversial to say, “All people who owned slaves were evil.”That comment IS controversial in the modern United States, and that is the root of our problem.There’s no need to make deities of imperfect menWhen you’re an infant, you regard your parents as gods. Effectively, they are gods to you. You can’t change your own diaper. You can’t get food. You can’t care for yourself. You’ll die without them.But as you get older, you start to recognize that even your parents made mistakes. This doesn’t mean that you now hate your parents (presuming their mistakes stopped well short of deliberate cruelty). It’s called maturity. You understand that your parents could have done things better. Realizing this allows you to provide your own children with a better experience.That’s called progress.This nonsense that we should revere past patriarchs and that it’s somehow “disrespectful” to ever recognize the things they got wrong is toxic. We can’t disregard their crimes to preserve our cultural narrative. We have to recognize that our cultural narrative is wrong.We must learn from mistakes. The Founding Fathers didn’t set a standard we can never achieve. That’s a lie designed to control you. Anyone who has never owned slaves is already a better human being than the Founding Fathers who did.We have to be better than them.The USA can continue to exist without maintaining lies about the Founding FathersThose who benefit from institutionalized racism like to sow the seeds of fear that any proposed change will completely destroy our way of life. But when they appeal to patriotism, they conveniently ignore all the things that our society gets wrong.* Poverty* Wealth inequality* A corrupt healthcare system* Police brutalityThose that benefit from oppression deceive us by claiming changes will eliminate the good things about our country. That’s a lie. The truth is that we can keep the good things and eliminate the bad.Again, this is infant-level thinking but somehow our society can’t seem to grasp it.The reverence we show to the Founding Fathers is not a requirement if we are to fulfill the promises upon which this nation was formed. In fact, the undeserved reverence we show the Founding Fathers creates friction in the form of cognitive dissonance that leaves us susceptible to manipulation.It’s toxic to force a population to revere human beings as infallible. Human beings are never infallible.If we are to revere something, let us revere the truth, even if that means dismantling the pedestals upon which we place our heroes.If “all people are created equal,” none of them should be placed on pedestals anyway. I hold that truth to be self-evident.Pay what you can: 30% off 💙 40% off 💙 50% off 💙 60% offI'd Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe