“The merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions …” — The Declaration of Independence, 1776 

Guest Essay

It’s the Fourth of July, our Nation’s semi-quincentennial, and I think I just need to come right out and say it.

The founding documents of the United States of America are not aspirational. And the people this nation refers to as its “Founding Fathers” were not the greatest people.

They were racist, they were sexist and they were white supremacists. Many of them owned slaves, and several of them were land speculators (over Indian lands). They were all colonizers. And the documents they wrote reflected those values.

The Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution

The problem is most people in the United States don’t know our Nation’s history and don’t know what our founding documents actually say. Many can quote the start of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…” But few people could tell you that the Declaration of Independence is a list of 27 grievances that the American colonies had against King George back in England.

And the Constitution is much the same. We all know how it starts: “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union…” But after that our memories get fuzzy. And, while we can quote the preamble, we do not think very deeply about what it actually says.

The authors of the Constitution did not believe that “We the people” meant all the people and the document they wrote was definitely not advocating for the rights of everyone. They did mention their goal to “secure the blessings of liberty” but then clearly stated that “blessing” was intended strictly “for ourselves and our posterity.”

The authors of the US Constitution were all white, they were all male, and they were all landowners. At least that was the criteria for who could vote back then. White, landing-owning men: That is who our Constitution was written for. How can I be so certain? Because I’ve read the document.

Article 1, Section 2 is very clear. This is the part of the Constitution that determines who is and who is not a part of this union, who is and who is not covered by this Constitution.

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

Article 1, Section 2 never mentions women. And if you read the entire Constitution, from the preamble down to the end of the 27th Amendment, you will find the authors used 51 gender-specific male pronouns (”he,” “him,” and “his”). Who can run for office, who can hold office, even who is protected by this document. There is not a single female pronoun in the entire Constitution. I know, I know. The argument is that male pronouns are how the English language worked back then. “He,” “him,” and “his” were used as inclusive pronouns. Yes, they were. And do you know why? Because European culture, white men and their society were both sexist and misogynistic. Women couldn’t vote. Women couldn’t hold office. Women couldn’t own land. Women were often seen as the property of their husbands. The Founding Fathers used gender-specific male pronouns because the male gender was all that mattered to them and to the society they were building.

Second, Article 1, Section 2 specifically excludes natives. And third, it counts Africans as three-fifths of a person. So back in 1787, if you remove women, exclude natives, and count Africans as “three fifths of a person” you are left with white, land-owning, men.

But let’s go back to the preamble where these white, slave owning and land speculating colonial men stated that their goal was to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

“Ourselves” is clear. But let’s talk about the word “posterity”. The common definition of posterity means all future generations, but when you put a pronoun in front of the word, it changes the meaning. When we work to recycle, when we work to protect the environment, when we do something for the sake of humanity, we say we are working for the benefit “of posterity”.

When used alone, posterity is an all-inclusive term. But placing a possessive pronoun in front of it changes everything. For example, by leveraging the astronomically inflated valuation of SpaceX, Elon Musk secured the financial future of “himself and his posterity.” Similarly, as demonstrated in his 2025 financial disclosures, by using the White House and the Oval Office for his own self-promotion and personal benefit Donald Trump is securing the financial future for “his posterity.”

When the Founding Fathers sat down in 1787, they weren’t building a system for all future humanity, they were establishing a legal trust to protect themselves and their direct, white, male descendants.

The same is true with the Declaration of Independence. The authors boldly declare: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” That sounds inclusive and even aspirational, but again it says “men“ not “women“ and if you read the entire document, you will note that in the 27th grievance, they accuse King George of exciting “domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring upon the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages…“ Clearly, they felt free to use the inclusive term “all men“ in the first sentence because they had a very narrow definition of who was actually human. Indigenous peoples and native nations were “fierce savages” and therefore not included.

And how about the 13th Amendment? Most people think our 13th Amendment abolishes slavery; but that is because they’ve never actually read the 13th Amendment.

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The 13th Amendment doesn’t abolish slavery; it redefines and codifies it under the jurisdiction of our criminal justice system. This is the same criminal justice system that has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, and that incarcerates people of color at three to five times the rate it incarcerates white people. Why? Because our Criminal Justice System is where slavery is still legal.

Supreme Court

In 1823, there was a Supreme Court case, Johnson v. McIntosh. Two men of European descent were litigating over a single piece of land. One of them got the land from a native nation; the other claimed to have received the same land from the US government and they wanted to know who owned it. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1823, this was the John Marshall Court, considered to be one of the greatest Supreme Court jurists in U.S. history, and that court had to determine the legal precedent for land titles. Who had the right to sell the land, the native nation or the U.S. government?

In his majority opinion, John Marshall ruled that “discovery” is what gave title to the land, “by whose government and by whose subjects it was made.“ And then, because that reading might possibly imply that native peoples had some sovereignty over our lands (we were here first), John Marshall went on to clarify that: “but the tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, Whose occupation was war, and whose subsistence was drawn chiefly from the forest. To leave them in possession of their country, was to leave the country a wilderness.“

This case, along with a few others in the 1820s and 30s, created the legal precedent for land titles. This precedent and the Doctrine of Discovery are referenced by the Supreme Court in 1954, 1985, and most recently in 2005.

Yes, you read that correctly, in the 21st century, when a land sovereignty case came before the Supreme Court, the first footnote of the Majority Opinion referenced by name the “Doctrine of Discovery“ and concluded that “standards of federal Indian law and federal equity practice preclude the Tribe from rekindling embers of sovereignty that long ago grew cold.”

In my 2019 TEDx talk I give more detail about the 2005 case and identify it as one of the most white supremacist Supreme Court opinions written in my lifetime. And that opinion was written and delivered by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

White Supremacy is a Bipartisan Value

The problem is that racism and white supremacy are bipartisan values. The United States of America is not racist, sexist and white supremacist in spite of our foundations; we are racist, sexist and white supremacists because of our foundations. These Founding Documents were never intended to be inclusive documents. These documents narrowly defined who is and who is not human, who was and who was not included, and ultimately they acted as a legal trust, passing down rights to the descendants of the white, land-owning men who wrote it.

And my proof is US history. We’ve never abolished slavery; it’s still 100% legal and constitutionally protected within our criminal justice system. Abraham Lincoln was a blatant, unapologetic and self-proclaimed white supremacist and one of the most genocidal presidents in US history as he worked to ethnically cleanse the northern, central and southern routes of the Transcontinental Railroad. The Trump administration, with help from the courts are rolling back the civil rights and voting rights that Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement fought so hard for. President Jimmy Carter’s tariffs on oil in 1980 were just as egregious (and unpopular) as Trump’s use of tariffs in 2025. And Donald Trump is aspiring to the deportation numbers attained by the Obama administration.

In 2016 Donald Trump ran for President with the stated goal to “Make America Great Again.”

In response, Hillary Clinton told her supporters that “America’s never stopped being great.”

Both Donald and Hillary believe that our nation’s past, our history and our Foundations are “Great.” They disagreed if the United States was great in 2016. Donald and the GOP said “No,” while Hillary and the Democrats said “Yes.”

For those who are not paying attention, those are both racist statements; implying that our history and our foundations are great. Our history, that includes the enslavement of black people, and the ethnic cleansing and genocide of native peoples is not great. And the same is true of our Foundations that, to this day, still refer to Native peoples as “savages” and constitutionally protects slavery within our criminal justice system.

The only demographic that can look back on our nation’s history with any sense of yearning, referring to past years as “Great” are white land-owning men. Nobody else can do that. Natives can’t do that. Women can’t do that. Other minorities can’t do that. The LGBTQ community can’t do that. African Americans can’t do that. 

So, when one candidate runs to “make America Great Again” and the other candidate tells their supporters that “America has never stopped being great”, they are speaking directly to, and for, their white, land-owning, male constituents.

During the 2016 general election, in her debate with Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton expanded on her statement. She went on to say that “America is great because America is good” and Donald Trump stopped. Remember, he was pacing all around the stage. He stopped, looked directly at her, and said, “I agree with her. I agree with everything she just said.”

We were duped. We thought the 2016 election was about racism versus anti-racism, equality versus inequality; but it wasn’t. What we were fed and what we were voting on was, did we want Donald Trump and the Republican Party to make the United States of America explicitly racist and sexist and white supremacist again? Or did we want Hillary Clinton and the Democrats to work to keep our racism and white supremacy implicit? We voted for “implicit” (yes, Trump lost the popular vote), but the Electoral College gave us “explicit.”

Fast forward to 2020, and the political establishment continued the illusion. Throughout his campaign, Joe Biden loved to misquote the Declaration of Independence. He would often say “We hold these quotes to be self-evident that all men and women are created equal.“ While the sentiment is correct, that is fundamentally not what the document says. And simply misquoting it does not fix it.

It was that exact frustration that led me to run for President in 2020 as an Independent candidate. I had the “crazy” idea that we needed to stop misquoting our founding documents, start being honest about their flaws, and actually edit them so that “We the People” could finally mean All the People

If you are still struggling to believe that our founding documents are problematic, I invite you this Fourth of July, to get into a diverse group of people (racially, ethnically, class, gender and sexual orientation) and read the documents out loud. You will be shocked and embarrassed at how quickly our founding documents turn racist, sexist and white supremacist.

Today, women earn 70 to 80 cents to the dollar earned by men. This is not surprising; our Constitution’s working. Today our prisons are filled with people of color. This also is not surprising; our Constitution is working. In 2010, the Supreme Court sided with Citizens United and ruled that corporations now have the same rights to political free speech as individuals. This opened the door for super PACs with their unlimited contributions to candidates. This is not shocking; the Constitution is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is protecting the interests of white land-owning men.

So What Do We Do?

I don’t think we need to get rid of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a part of our history, but it is a racist, sexist, and white supremacist document that we should not hold up as admirable.

And at the very least, we need to edit our Constitution. Not amend it, edit it. An amendment is just a historic footnote at the end of the page whispering, “when we said this, we should have meant that.” No, we need to take a pen, or a strikethrough font, to the original text.

To prove it could be done, I sat down and produced a fully edited version of the United States Constitution. I didn’t remove checks and balances, nor did I change the structural balance of power. I simply went through our Constitution with a strikethrough font. Every time I came across a gender specific male pronoun, I put a strike through it and replaced it with a proper noun, or gender-neutral pronoun. The clause in the 13th Amendment keeping slavery legal in prison? Strikethrough font. The phrase counting black people as three-fifths? Strikethrough font.

And I edited the preamble, adding the two words “value life” and putting a strike through a few others. I like these changes. They’re simple, yet meaningful. And I think they help make our Constitution something “All the People” can aspire to. I welcome you to read it. And I encourage you to read it out loud.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, value life, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our for posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Today is our Nation’s 250th birthday. We have a very troubling past, but we can do better. We should do better. We need to do better.

Walk in beauty my relatives, and may we all learn how to walk in beauty together.