Political Memes

I agree and here is why. From the beginning, America told a lie. It wrapped itself in the language of freedom, but the bones of the thing—its economic engine, its social order, its very definition of who counted as human—were built on slavery. The Southern plantation class didn’t just benefit from that lie; they forced it into the structure of the Revolution. And we have been living with the consequences ever since.

By the 1770s, abolitionist winds were blowing through Britain. The Somerset decision in 1772 made it clear that slavery had no legal standing in English law. That terrified Southern elites. They saw the writing on the wall and understood something the rest of us are still catching up to: liberty and slavery cannot coexist. So they made a choice.

When Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he tried to condemn the slave trade. The Southern states shut that down. Their message was simple and brutal—no independence unless slavery is protected. The Revolution was supposed to be a break from tyranny, but what they built was just a new structure to preserve their own power. The hypocrisy was not an accident. It was the blueprint.

Writers of the period—some knowingly, some unwillingly—captured this fracture. Phillis Wheatley, writing in bondage, praised liberty in verse while living its total denial. Jefferson wrote about the natural rights of man even as he enslaved his own children. Crèvecœur celebrated the American farmer while stepping carefully around the blood in the soil.

This is not ancient history. The same corruption runs through our systems today. You can see it in voter suppression, in prison labor, in economic policies that preserve wealth for the few at the expense of the many. We keep pretending this country was founded on pure ideals, but the rot was there at the root. The Southern elite didn't just defend slavery—they rewired the American idea around it. And we still haven't torn that wiring out.

Until we do, every time we talk about freedom, there's an asterisk.