A Founding Contradiction

Hidden Brain

Hidden Brain Media

Social Sciences, Performing Arts, Science, Arts

4.6 • 42.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2022

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Those words, penned by Thomas Jefferson 246 years ago, continue to inspire many Americans. And yet they were written by a man who owned hundreds of enslaved people, and fathered six children by an enslaved woman. This week, as we prepare to mark Independence Day in the United States, we revisit our 2018 conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed. We talk about the contradictions in Jefferson's life — and how those contradictions resonate in our own lives.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.
0:05.7	All nations...
0:07.2	At the stroke of the midnight hour,
0:09.8	are built on stories.
0:12.1	India will awake to life and freedom.
0:16.9	There's stories about ideals.
0:25.6	The values around which people stake their identity. We'll fight on the beaches, we'll fight on the landing ground.
0:31.6	Mites helping mates. That's what it means to be Australian.
0:35.6	The only say,
0:36.6	Germany is a wonderful land.
0:39.3	Let's freedom,
0:40.3	God bless Africa.
0:42.3	I thank you.
0:44.3	Often, these stories contain contradictions.
0:47.3	Some, so profound, that most of us
0:53.3	simply look the other way.
0:58.6	The United States has its own set of founding myths and its own set of contradictions.
1:06.0	One of the most striking unfolded in 1776 at a house on the southwest corner
1:12.4	of 7th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.
1:16.1	That summer, 33-year-old Thomas Jefferson rented rooms at this house.
1:22.5	While he was there, he wrote the document
1:25.0	that would formalize America's split from Britain, the Declaration of Independence.
	...

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