to disregard the context in which the founding fathers' ideologies developed is to ignore the utter hypocrisy of their views.

these were wealthy men who owned other human beings for personal economic benefit.

whatever high-seeming notions may have underpinned their political project, their goal was to build a new nation in which they could continue to accumulate dynastic wealth free from monarchial control, at the cost of the very freedoms they claimed to stand for.

the hypocrisy is inextricable from the legacy.