“Liberals condemn the Founders because they supposedly did not believe that all human beings are created equal, or because they supposedly betrayed their own stated belief in human equality. ‘Jefferson didn’t mean it when he wrote that all men are created equal,’ writes historian John Hope Franklin. ‘We’ve never meant it. The truth is we’re a bigoted people and always have been.’ We have seen that such falsehoods are incessantly repeated and broadcast by many of today’s leading scholars and textbooks. Historian Paul Finkelman writes that Jefferson committed ‘treason against the hopes of the world’ because he failed to do more to abolish slavery ... Leading sophisticates—writers, professors, and journalists, whatever their political persuasion—seem convinced that there was something profoundly wrong with the origins of America.”