(1) According to
Kurt Vonnegut, the Founding Fathers were marauding "sea pirates" (read: white Europeans), who "founded" new nations in North, Central, and South America by displacing or exterminating the indigenous inhabitants.
(2) ' The Founding Fathers of the United States of America were political leaders and
statesmen who participated in the American Revolution by signing the United States
Declaration of Independence, taking part in the American Revolutionary War, and establishing the United States Constitution.
' Many of the Founding Fathers owned African American slaves, and the Constitution adopted in 1787 sanctioned the system of slavery.
' Some historians define the "Founding Fathers" to mean a larger group, including not only the Signers and the Framers but also all those who, whether as politicians, jurists, statesmen, soldiers, diplomats, or ordinary citizens, took part in winning American independence and creating the United States of America.' -- Wikipedia
EXAMPLE:
' A lot of the nonsense was the innocent result of playfulness on the part of the
founding fathers. But some of the nonsense was evil, since it concealed great crimes. For example, {U. S.} teachers wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with
pride and joy:
' =
1492 =
' The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.
' Here was another piece of evil nonsense which children were taught: that the sea pirates eventually created a government which became a beacon of freedom to human beings everywhere else. There were pictures and statues of this supposed imaginary beacon for children to see. It was sort of an ice-cream cone on fire.
' Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery.
' The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black.
' Color was everything. '
-- From
Kurt Vonnegut's 1973 novel "Breakfast of Champions" -- Chapter 1 (
page 10 - 11).