D. Finch-Hatton

This is true of the Founders and their politics generally: when you look at how they acted and what they did, their intentions are made clear This is particularly true in the case of equality With the exception of Franklin, who was generally more egalitarian, they didn't actually believe in the equality of man. They thought full members of the res publica should have equal civic rights, which they could earn by being white men who accumulated/stewarded enough property to be in the upper half of society. That's how landed/propertied voting worked in their day and they all generally supported it (again with the exception of Franklin) in one form of another. They weren't interested in treating the mumbled and schizophrenic delusions of every "unhoused individual" (escaped slave) as sacred, nor in giving away the vast plantations that served as the basis of their authority, nor even in public education of the sort we now have: even Jefferson, who proposed some public education, wanted it to be pyramidal and a way of finding the best men around the state so they could be trained in leadership. He didn't actually believe men are equal (nor did what he wrote claim that such equality was self-evident; that was a Franklin edit) This matters, as their deeds mattered. They built a republic meant to be ruled by a partnership of gentleman leaders and yeomen citizens, and thought that he who wanted a place in either group would have to earn it through talent and stewardship. This was generally true in their day, even for the grandees; William Byrd III, after all, went broke because he was a dolt Such is what was intended, and if we are to get back to anything resembling their vision, what we'll have to get back to. It lasted much longer in the South than in the North, and is reclaimable, with variations for modernity, in our day. But it has to be rebuilt, and requires much more character and action than theory, pedantry, and terminally onlineism