They did strive to put it in practice, in the societal context of their time.
You seem to be missing that progress is a gradual process of painstaking change. Presumably you're looking at what we currently have, thinking its manifestly obvious, and taking it for granted. But to me, this kind of thinking actually contributes to sliding backwards.
thanks, but I've read history too. The "revolution" (which despite the name wasn't much of a revolution since it maintained much of the social structure that came before it) was the opportunity to make some great leaps of progress, which the founders, is their now revered wisdom, failed to do. These did eventually come but some of them only at great expense and activism (abolition movement, workers progressive movement, suffrage movement, civil right movement).
Voting rights in the new US were much the same as those in British Empire they broke away from, where white adult landowning males had been able to vote for some time.
As for slavery, most countries still allowed it, but abolishing it, while admittedly a big step forward, would still have been possible within the context of the time, and one of the strides of progress one would expect from people who declare independence on the basis of "all men being created equal". Some States began to abolish it shortly afterwards, and France did so with its own actual revolution (with its own set of problems).
You might be comfortable with it all, but I expect much more from the founders than some nice words on a page.
Ironically, the fundamental basis for the revolution was "taxation without representation", which we _still_ have in the United States today (i.e., PR).
They did strive to put it in practice, in the societal context of their time.
You seem to be missing that progress is a gradual process of painstaking change. Presumably you're looking at what we currently have, thinking its manifestly obvious, and taking it for granted. But to me, this kind of thinking actually contributes to sliding backwards.
thanks, but I've read history too. The "revolution" (which despite the name wasn't much of a revolution since it maintained much of the social structure that came before it) was the opportunity to make some great leaps of progress, which the founders, is their now revered wisdom, failed to do. These did eventually come but some of them only at great expense and activism (abolition movement, workers progressive movement, suffrage movement, civil right movement).
Voting rights in the new US were much the same as those in British Empire they broke away from, where white adult landowning males had been able to vote for some time.
As for slavery, most countries still allowed it, but abolishing it, while admittedly a big step forward, would still have been possible within the context of the time, and one of the strides of progress one would expect from people who declare independence on the basis of "all men being created equal". Some States began to abolish it shortly afterwards, and France did so with its own actual revolution (with its own set of problems).
You might be comfortable with it all, but I expect much more from the founders than some nice words on a page.
Ironically, the fundamental basis for the revolution was "taxation without representation", which we _still_ have in the United States today (i.e., PR).