I read this exceptional article several weeks ago, but didn't want to share it until I'd seen #12YearsASlave:

"Anyone who acquires the narrative of '12 Years A Slave' and finds it within his shrunken heart to continue any argument for the sanctity and perfection of our Founding Fathers, for the moral wisdom of their compromised document of national ideal that begins the American experience, or for their anachronistic or historically understandable tolerance of slavery — they are arguing from a desolate, amoral corner.

If original intent included the sadism and degradation of human slavery, then original intent is a legal and moral standard that can be consigned to the ash heap of human history. Hardcore conservatives and libertarians who continue to parse the origins of the Constitutions under the guise of returning to a more perfect American union are on a fool’s journey to decay and dishonor.

Slavery was abomination, and we, in our birth of liberty, codified it and nurtured it. ... It took Lincoln, and a great war, to hijack the American experiment from its original, cold intentions by falsely claiming, a century and a half ago, that the nation was founded on the proposition that all men are created equal. It was founded on no such thing. It required blood, a new birth of honor and a continuing battle for civil rights that is still being fought for this nation to be so founded."

http://davidsimon.com/slavery-a-film-narrative-and-the-myth-of-original-intent/

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