HISTORICAL SKEPTICISM

MY HEALTHY HISTORICAL SKEPTICISM I am now impelled to doubt the truthfulness of much American history that is taught in school. My list includes the legitimacy of 1773's "Boston Tea Party." More probably rather being than Indians as their crude disguises implied, they were more probably American coffee merchants, British tea merchants ' competitors, who used the mask of liberty hubbub to hide their commercial assault on a tea! My skepticism also includes the "Declaration of Independence," of 1776, whose original authorship is most usually attributed to Thomas Jefferson, a wealthy slave holder. My studies disclose to me that the actual author of this profound document was Thomas Paine, the fabulous English pamphleteer, whose anonymous "Common Sense" series ranks among the foremost of American literary and historical achievements. Jefferson, has never claimed its authorship, although he was on the 5-man special editing committee of the Continental Congress that excised the key provisions assailing George III for kidnapping "unoffending" Africans and Indians for slavery. Such edits were originally among the stated reasons for American colonial separation from Mother country, England. Thomas Paine was an abolitionist and was not a delegate to the Continental Congress . In fact, my dubiety extends to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, a low-level "coup d'etat" that under the pretense of amending, actually openly beheaded the then existing "Articles of Confederation," as the nation's governing document. The resulting United States of America Constitution appears to have been a consequence of an pernicious effort to control taxes and tariffs by a central government authority, headed by heroic George Washington, another slave holder, rather than a document dedicated to republican democracy or human brotherhood. In it, the slave trade was extended for 20 years until 1808, Africans were deemed to be 3/5s of a man who lacked stature, whether slave or free. The full faith and credit clause as well as the commerce clause were designed to protect the slave trade. The "Bill of Rights'" ten Amendments was only added in 1791, fully two years after ratification, the same year that the first Fugitive Slave Act was passed. That will suffice for now. Perhaps others may understand that lying hypocrisy in American history is inborn, not imported, nor foreign.