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Comment by throwaway-blaze | Hacker News Reader

Maybe worth mentioning that the founding fathers in the US believed only property owners should vote.

They also didn't forbid slavery. It doesn't mean they were right.

“Didn’t forbid”, if referring to the framers of the Constitution, is a bit of an understatement, given that they created multiple layers of protection to prevent dismantling slavery at the federal level into the future.

The founding fathers, the framers (a different and later group, though the two overlap and are often conflated) and original states had a variety of (and evolving in some cases between the Founding and the Constitution) opinions on the issue; some (Thomas Paine and Ben Franklin, notably, the latter also the primary author of PA’s 1776 Constitution which also adopted this position at the state level) were in favor of universal male suffrage.

It's important to consider context when talking about people's moral positions over time.

We don't judge the founding fathers' morals by the same metrics we judge our contemporaries. That much should be obvious.

Not the most important(IMO) of our founding fathers, Thomas Paine.

Let's make everyone a property owner by default at birth

Franklin also practiced air bathing instead of hygiene.

Franklin also supported universal male suffrage, wrote Pennsulvania’s 1776 constitution which adopted universal male suffrage, and condemned property requirements for the franchise, reportedly arguing:

“Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars, and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the meantime has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers — but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass.”

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