{"id":142,"date":"2015-05-02T21:42:15","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T01:42:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2015-05-02T21:45:41","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T01:45:41","slug":"the-tea-party-misrepresents-the-founders-henrico-county-va-edition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"The Tea Party Misrepresents the Founders, Henrico County VA Edition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This sign, place by the <a href=\"http:\/\/hctp.org\" target=\"_blank\">Henrico County Tea Party<\/a>, stands on highway 156 north between I64 and I295 in eastern Henrico County, Virginia:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/IMG_1053.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-143 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/IMG_1053-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"IMG_1053\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/IMG_1053-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/IMG_1053-1024x768.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>In case you cannot read the text, it says &#8220;Dependence and entitlement were not concepts of the Founding Fathers. \u00a0Self reliance was.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Except maybe not. \u00a0Prominent Virginia Founders like Washington and Jefferson owned slaves. \u00a0These men did not rely on their own ingenuity and hard work to make themselves successful in life. \u00a0They relied instead on the hard work &#8211; and reproduction &#8211; of the human beings they held in human chattel slavery. \u00a0These men did not start businesses or farms, employ others, and make a profit. \u00a0They purchased &#8211; or mostly inherited &#8211; \u00a0human beings and then worked them almost literally to death so they could live a comfortable life.<\/p>\n<p>Thomas Jefferson wrote that &#8220;&#8230;a child raised every 2. years is of more profit than the crop of the best laboring man.&#8221; \u00a0He relied not on his own ingenuity and hard work but on breeding human beings like livestock.\u00b9<\/p>\n<p>Washington and Jefferson, along with the other men who signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution, indeed began a bold experiment in republican government &#8211; at least for the time. \u00a0And I expect they believed in the virtues of hard work. \u00a0But many of these men, including all of them from Virginia, did not rely on their own selves. \u00a0They relied on, and built their wealth on, the backs of human beings who worked as slaves in labor camps.<\/p>\n<p>The Henrico Tea Party should remove this sign.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b9Wiencek, Henry, (2012). \u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Master of the Mountain, Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves<\/span>. New York, NY: Farrah, Strauss and Giroux, page 259.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This sign, place by the Henrico County Tea Party, stands on highway 156 north between I64 and I295 in eastern Henrico County, Virginia: In case you cannot read the text, it says &#8220;Dependence and entitlement were not concepts of the Founding Fathers. \u00a0Self reliance was.&#8221; Except maybe not. \u00a0Prominent Virginia Founders like Washington and Jefferson [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tea-party-signs","category-the-founders-and-slavery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foggybottomline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}