I Guess She's Never Heard of the Civil War

I'm not sure what's behind the Republican fascination with the America founders being men who did no wrong. They treat them as if they are god-like superheroes who forged a nation together comparable to how Superman bends metal with his mind.

They were men, all white upper class elitists who out of political expediency created a pragmatic way to allow only white, upper class, men just like themselves to live freely.  The founders had no intentions of including women, blacks or aboriginal natives in their little Constitution thingy.  If they had, they would have simply written them in.

I suppose in their Texas history books it says something about how the founders were really a diverse group of people who hated slavery and cheered on equal rights.  At least that's what batshit crazy Michelle Bachmann seems to think.

"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."

"Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" she asked.

Except for IT DID MATTER GREATLY the color of your skin and your language and your economic status.  If you were black you were brought over in chains, sold on an auction block and put into bondage.  Ask immigrant Italians if their language mattered.  And ask the Irish if their economic status mattered.  All of it did.  Only someone who has no clue about the history of this country could stand before--an all white-- crowd of people and pretend that during the early inception of this country everyone was equal when they got here.  It's ludicrous to say such.

Bachmann goes a step further with her stupidity by telling the Iowa crowd that our founders were such great men that they "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."

You have to be kidding me!  Has she never heard of the Civil War?  This is just amazing.  The founders did not end slavery.  Almost half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were slave owners.  They even agreed to count slaves as 3/5 a person in order to appease the Southern states.  Not one single founder was alive when slavery was brought to an end.  The bloodiest war America has ever fought ended slavery.  None of it had anything to do with our founders working to end it.  But it had everything to do with how our founders instituted slavery into our national character.

We don't have to agree on the political issues of the day.  We don't even have to like each other.  But my God we at least have to hold certain historical truths as being the moral fabric of our society whether they are pleasant to talk about or not.  Rewriting history to fit the Republican tea bagger narrative is a dangerous attempt at destroying our future.

*Update:

Come to think of it, Bachmann's distorted tea bagger view of American history coincides perfectly with the Republican tea bagger insistence to read the Constitution on the House floor.  Republicans in charge of the Patriotic reading session intentionally left out the parts in the Constitution, written by our founders, dealing with slavery.

Republicans said they left that part out because they only wanted to read the parts that have not been "superseded by amendment."  But that's not true.  They read the 18th Amendment that prohibit alcohol and then read the amendment which repealed it.  They read the 14th and 26th Amendments which supersede each other.  They just didn't want to read the parts where our founders wrote slavery into our national identity.  Because to them, in their sick and twisted make-believe world, our founders "worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."  They are liars and deranged to their core.

**Update:

Reader CL writes in to tell me that as part of the very Patriotic demands of the Tea Baggers they are wanting states all over the country to quit forcing schools to teach accurate history to students.  In the place of accuracy they want to replace it with deranged versions of Tea Bagger revisionism.  Most notably, their insistence that our founders were not hypocrites regarding equal rights and that minority history should not overshadow our founders great contributions in ensuring the freedom of said minorities.

In other words, Tea Baggers want schools to teach exactly what Bachmann says above: that our founders worked diligently to end slavery and that when everyone came to this country they were treated equally.

***Update:

Wow, here's something I didn't even catch the first 30 times reading this.

During her totally amazing revisionist speech of American history, a speech she was giving to conjure up more support for her 2012 presidential run, Michelle Bachmann lamented "it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

Now read the bold face again.  Now read it again just to be certain.  John Quincy Adams was not a founding father or a forbearer.  He had nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence or the writing of the Constitution.  Bachmann obviously meant John Adam, John Quincy's father, but she's too stupid to know the difference. In case she really meant to say JQA, she's still wrong because he rested almost two decades before the 13th Amendment was adopted which forever "extinguished" slavery in America-- again something he had nothing to do with.