Written 8/15/17 on Facebook

Today the so-called President compared George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Is he right or wrong to do so?

Is it fair to compare two of the country's founding fathers, who owned slaves, to Confederates who attempted to destroy America and preserve slavery through violent means?

Is the so-called President right in that all of these men are equally bad? Is there a moral equivalence between George Washington and Robert E. Lee?

I don't think so. We now understand, centuries later, that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were not perfect men. They did not have a complete vision of freedom. They did, however, advance the cause of freedom, albeit very imperfectly. But please remember that slavery existed before they did and that the United States was a revolutionary experiment in freedom that, to this day, still needs improvements.

Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, however, stood opposed to the advancement of freedom. They believed deeply in slavery. They were deeply racist and had not progressed as others did in the decades after Washington and Jefferson. They had a choice to make that Washington and Jefferson were never confronted with - go to war over slavery or end slavery and preserve the Union. They chose war and slavery. It is very possible that Washington and Jefferson would have decided otherwise if given the opportunity. We can never know.

We do know this: if there is any common-sense definition of treason, Lee and Jackson fit it perfectly; and all for the cause of slavery. The so-called President ignores this or embraces this; he is mentally unfit for the job.