Former President Barack Obama criticized the nation’s Founding Fathers, condemning their ties to slavery.
“I think sometimes we get confused in thinking that these two stories are separate. They’re intertwined, right? Which is why it’s possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington, and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder,” Obama said in an interview with MSNOW.
“That does not negate [Washington’s] greatness, it simply acknowledges that there’s a profound deep flaw in these Founding Fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools,” he said, adding, “It’s true of every president that we’re this mixed bag. We’ve got contradictions, and embody the country’s contradictions. Complicated, as I said.”
“I think when you understand the complexities of America and the contradictions of America, I don’t think it makes you love it less. I think it makes you love it more,” he argued.
The comments are similar to those he issued during his presidential center’s opening ceremony, when he declared, “In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property.”
“The success of this experiment was never a given,” he acknowledged at the time, further noting that the Founders “did have the foresight, the genius, to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect.”
Discussing the nation’s upcoming anniversary, Obama said the nation’s founders envisioned a country with “no kings or lords, no serfs or subjects, but only citizens, each of us free to pursue our own version of happiness and able to determine our collective fate through an elected representative government.”
