>OK, they also knew that Black people were inferior. I believe
>that to be not so. Thomas Jefferson, who was a slaveholder, wrote the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, which prohibited both slavery and involuntary servitude in the Northwest Territories. The Congress of the Conferderation passed it. So I wouldn't be so certain that the Founding Fathers "knew" black people were inferior, because if they really believed this to be so, they wouldn't have banned the expansion of slavery into the Northwest Territories.
It also appears that the reason the Continental Congress changed John Locke's declaration about "life, liberty and property" being sacrosanct into "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration was due to unease over people being property.
>They knew guns could fire at most nine shots a minute,
>I also believe this to be not so.
A gun that could have fired nine rounds in a minute in that day would have been such a huge advance . . . I think firing two rounds in a minute was as good as could be envisioned. And rifling was only available in gun barrels as long as George Washington was tall, which is why so few people died from gunfire. (N.B. A Revolutionary War general named Benedict Arnold figured out how to use the rebels' one company of backwoodsmen equipped with long rifles to crush a superior British army at Saratoga. Mind you, he was never given credit for this huge tactical breakthrough because of other events that happened in his life shortly thereafter.)
>They believed that the only way to protest was violently.
>Gandhi and Bayard Rustin have shown us that is not so.
Had Gandhi tried to do nonviolent protest in the 1700s, he would have been dead as a doorknob. Nonviolent protest can only succeed when mainstream violence becomes unacceptable.
>If you have arguments and beliefs then by all means state
>them but don't say oh some bloke who died 300
>years ago said x therefore it must be true.
Is there anything that "must be true"? Even despite my belief in the Christian writings, this discussion makes me think of that to which Estee alluded:
Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him."