[lbo-talk] Nye on empire

[Dennis Perrin]

> I would ask Dwayne Monroe, and others on this
> list, did the Founders of this country invite Native-
> Americans to their Continental Congress to help
> frame their constitution?  Did they invite any slaves
> to help frame their constitution?  How many women
> were invited to help frame their constitution? And,
> for that matter, how many non-propertied white
> males did they invite to help frame their constitution?
>
> Whose class interests were represented, at that time
> or since, in their constitution (or by which amendment
> to their constitution), apart from their own bloody
> class of white male slave-owners?

All true (though Thomas Paine had a broader scope). And yet, despite the
blood-drenched corrupt white hands that forged that document, and the Bill
of Rights, both remain in many ways quite radical -- certainly in
slave-owning time, and, as Ashcroft and Ridge roll along, increasingly so in
ours.

DP