Sometimes, being a historian can make your jaw drop.

Charles Thomson was the Secretary of Congress from 1774-1789, from the first meeting of the Continental Congress until the new Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.

His job was to record everything that happened in Congress. He probably knew more about the American Revolution than any other single person, especially on topics like the politics and governance and high-level decisions. He also helped to design the Great Seal.

He wrote approximately 1,000 pages of a history of the American Revolution, based on material he had left out of the official Congressional records. He burned it sometime after 1789, along with some of his personal papers and pages from his journals.

When asked why he would destroy all of that knowledge, this is what he told his friends:

"I [would] contradict all the histories of the great events of the Revolution. Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to them, and thus good may be done."

"I shall not undeceive future generations."

The Founding Fathers and the Framers were not innocents. The United States does not have a holy mission from god to "civilize" the world and spread some conservative vision of "freedom" (translation: capitalism) across the globe.

Today, we have a chance, a real chance, at changing what the United States means to the people of earth, and the earth itself. We can work to prevent pollution from wrecking our only home. We can do much, much better at respecting other nations and their diverse peoples.

("Other nations" includes Native nations specifically of North America, for the record.) We can stop US military and CIA intervention around the world and stop trying to seize the world's natural resources to line the pockets of billionaires with blood-soaked money.

It is now clear that to accomplish this we must end the Neoliberal order. We must institute a system very different from the corrupt, racist oligarchy that currently runs the nation. We must make this a nation of, by, and for the people, not in the flawed tradition of the Framers

and their racist, aristocratic tendencies, but in the much broader vision of today's leftists.

We must make a system that considers people as the most important aspect of society. People are what matter, not little scraps of colored cloth paper.