America has always been corrupt.

A nation “discovered” by those seeking fame and fortune at any cost and colonized by religious fanatics who were kicked out of every decent country in Europe. When the early European settlers became entrenched on this continent, they displaced or killed indigenous people and brought with them enslaved human beings whose only sin was being born a different color than their captors.

Our revolution was based on a democracy where conceptually all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The trick was that the Declaration of Independence wasn’t about universal suffrage. Women, enslaved people and indigenous people were left out of the equation.

While some believe that stating that we are a government that “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” is hypocritical coming from slave-owning, misogynistic forefathers who engaged in a genocidal “Trail of Tears," they would be in error. Our forefathers, flawed as they were, tried to build a “more perfect union.” The words of the revolution and our Constitution, which guaranteed our rights, were not set in stone and did not pass off a flawed culture as a perfect one. The Constitution is a living document and our forefathers were smart enough to see they weren’t all that smart. Their wisdom is seen in their creating of a government that can evolve as our knowledge evolves.

Thus, individual colonies came together for a common cause – to fight the King of England – a monarch. In doing so, each colony had to compromise, but the leaders struggled to move forward toward a more enlightened future. Some of them could see beyond the horizon of hate and divisiveness to a time when all people participated in government – working together toward a common goal. The progress we’ve made in women’s suffrage, equal rights, civil rights, the separation of church and state along with the freedom to worship as you choose speak to the progress we’ve made.

The Civil War, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Jim Crow segregation, anti-semitism, Christian Nationalism, book banning, Japanese internment camps, and burning........

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