re: Were the founders full of shite?

I don't subscribe to the idea that they or their ideas were infallible, but there were also some brilliant thinkers who were very influential among them.

I see you and your other persona SFP are the only ones to upvote this crap.

Your first mistake is looking at it through a sociological standpoint….

The founding fathers were pragmatic in realizing one nation with 13 states was something new and experimental and the only way it could work was to be open to disagreement and acceptance of another states differences. And importantly that simple democracy would crush the basic concept of states so they insisted on a representative republic over a democracy. The majority of states had already outlawed slavery and polling suggests the majority of all people saw the evils of slavery but this new government relied on a basic framework to hold the states together as one nation. The constitution explicitly talks about states rights but not slavery for a reason

All men are created equal under god not government.

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Reading some of our founding documents and things just aren't adding up. I'm trying to approach this through a sociological lens, taking into consideration common opinions/beliefs at the time, but still...

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Well, there's your fricking problem, right there.

Perhaps one thing that seldom, if ever, comes up is how young the Founders were. Jefferson.....I believe but one was for sure....was only 18 yrs old. They weren't a "bunch of old white men". They were all white males, yes, but not your typical today's politicians.

Moron

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There's no way any reasonable person saw someone with a pulse, who bled, breathed, ate, drank, etc. and believed "Nope. That is not a human."

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You seem to have no qualms about not considering babies as human as you advocate for their murder

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Reading some of our founding documents and things just aren't adding up.

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You haven't read enough yet, then.

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taking into consideration common opinions/beliefs at the time

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You aren't doing a good enough job of that. My belief is that you aren't reading it through the eyes of someone who saw slavery as having been an ever-present part of life for all known history, but as someone who abhors it.

And here's why I level those two critiques:

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The revolutionary claim that “all men are created equal” coexisted with the enslavement of millions

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Being able to truly look through the eyes of someone who lived back then is fundamental to understand the rationale behind the Three-Fifths Compromise. Slavery, at that time, was considered just part of life as it had existed in some form or other throughout known history. While some found it abhorrent, many found it merely distasteful while others simply didn't think on it (ie: it just was).

During the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, the future states disagreed on how to count populations for determining seats in the House of Representatives and direct tax obligations. States with larger slave populations (usually Southern states) wanted to count enslaved individuals fully to increase their congressional representation. Northern states, having fewer slaves, argued that enslaved people (who had no voting rights nor civic agency) should not count toward representation but could be counted for taxation.

The resulting compromise stipulated that each enslaved person would be counted as "three-fifths" of a free person for both representation in the House and allocation of federal taxes. Free persons (including indentured servants) were counted as fully, while "all other persons" (enslaved individuals) were counted as 0.6 of a person.

Many of the Founding Fathers were abolitionists, but not enough to form a union which abolished slavery at the onset. Without this compromise, the United States may well not have formed (and forming the union was the primary goal). This is also one of the reasons for a path for amending the Constitution.