I wonder if any new school is being named for Patrick Henry and how many have been renamed because of the short-sighted proposition against any and all slave-holders. It is real hubris to make this the “feather on the scale of Justice” instead of the totality of an entire life. As an aspect of the Founder’s lives, being a slave owner should neither be applauded nor glossed over, but logic should prevail that it was by the country and institutions that they helped emplace that has resulted in, arguably, the least race-constrained society in this world.
I am ALWAYS dumbfounded at our collective luck in having this group of practical idealists for the founders of our country. From Benjamin Franklin to Gilbert du Motier (Marquis de Lafayette), we had a crop of intellectual and warrior luminaries equal if not superior to any other time or place. For them to also be wedded to the concepts of a republic and to be so resistant to self-aggrandizement, is a further wonder for the ages.
It makes you wonder just how many other times in history a similar push for liberty occurred, in some unknown and so unremarked place. But the simple lack of a Patrick Henry, a Madison, or a Washington, or all three, at the critical time, doomed the effort to failure.
But I guess that only in the one unlikely instance where it all came together at once, as you say, here in the U.S., would we be free and able to remark on it now...
In the other instances the less fortunate wouldn't know what they missed, and so wouldn't miss it.
Or is that to simplistic?
pickrell, thanks for the info on Patrick Henry - I (shamefully) was more in the "Isn't he that liberty or death guy?" camp.