questions from the fork-less people

forks are a sign of class in probate lists from the colonial period

Were the elite of the founding generation whiners?  Did they provoke a revolution in order to win for themselves freedoms they desired when they already had lots of forks and their contemporaries lacked both forks and other necessities?  Did they not care about those who were less free, indentured, or enslaved?  Did they know better and compromise on their ideals? If so, does that make them hypocrites?   And if they were, are we any different or better?  

Great questions from today's discussion in section A where we considered the revolution from the perspective of people who owned few if any forks or who were required to polish other people's forks and may have longed for something to eat, with or without forks.

Next week we'll turn to the Declaration of Independence.  I'm looking forward to reading it with these questions in mind.  These are not precisely the questions Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams were addressing, but neither are these questions irrelevant to what they wrote.