Messages 2010
The Elitism of the Founding Fathers - 2
April 13th, 2010.
Santa Cruz, California
Received by FAB
I am here, Benjamin Franklin.
I want to comment on the subject of elitism in regard to the American government. You are aware that in those days, political leaders were not elected so much by the people. U.S. senators certainly were not, and we set up the Electoral College, which I know you have always abhorred.
Well, I discussed elitism in my channeling of January 23, 2010, and what I said there applies to these other forms of the early American government. It is our motives that are the true basis of virtue or sin, so as we set up the new government, whenever our motives leaned toward snobbishness and elitism, this came back to us over here, and whenever our concern was genuinely for the people and for a workable government, this made us happy in the spirit world.
I know what you are thinking: that if, as I have said in a past channeling, something higher, we believed, was in the air, then how could this higher reality square with these manifestations that denied democracy and gave more power to the ruling class?
Well, as you well know, our view of humanity was not positive. Having studied the history of governments, and observing human nature from the perspective of mature years, we did everything we could to put in place a workable government which would be able to function in a way that accounted for our less than glowing view of human nature.
But mixed in with this sincere effort was also a notion that we were somehow better. This was relevant in the way we viewed the Natives. Some of us did better than others, but to compare the Native culture to the lofty peaks of the European Enlightenment and other manifestations of Western culture, was seen as frankly absurd. In some of us, this attitude was not quite so stark and blunt, but we just didn’t see the Natives as full equals.
I read your thought, and it is correct: there is that sentence about the Natives in the Declaration of Independence that reveals this prejudice. And that’s what it was: prejudice. For over here, all spirits, no matter what society or class they came from, are subject to the exact same laws.
This equality was actually openly discussed by Enlightenment thinkers, but as your experience has taught you, mortals are imperfect and thus can be inconsistent. You are thinking of the example of Thomas Jefferson in regard to slavery. Yes, that encapsulates what I am saying, that simultaneous with a greater vision was our flawed humanity.
This relates directly to my opening remarks, for even as we tried to put together a government that would function successfully according to human nature, we could not fully see our own complicity in imperfection. That is, though some of us, like George Washington and myself, worked hard on our character, we could not escape the prejudices and limitations of our time, which considered African Americans, Natives, and ordinary people as incapable of governing themselves.
As you can very well see, this subject is complex, and it is equally untrue to say that we were nothing but selfish elitists bent on preserving our class’ power, as it is to say that we were completely champions of the rule of the people. It is easy to pick holes in both arguments because neither is wholly true.