America at 250: The Founder They Erased - Jesse Wegman - The Lincoln Project

[Rhiannon12866]

Six men signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. You can probably name Franklin. You've almost certainly never heard of James Wilson — the man who did more than almost anyone to put "We the People" at the heart of American government, sat on the first Supreme Court… and then died broke, on the run from creditors, and was quietly erased from the story of the founding.

As part of our special 250th podcast rollout celebrating this amazing country of ours, Rick Wilson sits down with Jesse Wegman — New York Times editorial board member and author of the new book on James Wilson — to resurrect the most important founder nobody remembers. They get into how Wilson shaped the Constitution, why his radical idea of popular sovereignty still defines (and haunts) American democracy, how a founding genius ended up in a debtor's ruin, and what his erasure tells us about the myths we build around 1776.

It's the perfect 250th-birthday story: not the founders on the money, but the one history decided to forget — and why remembering him matters now more than ever. - 07/01/2026.

[rampartd]

1. i wonder if rick wilson's geneology led him to this guy

james wilson invented the electoral college? he might have wanted to be forgotten for that.

"we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" is supposedly the founders' oath. i want to look that up . they knew they were committing a crime. treason.

last line of declaration of independence. just above the john hancock.

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

they "mass deported" the loyalists = 1/3 of the colonial population
they ethnically cleansed the indigenous population
they enslaved millions

maybe these freemasons were so confident in their class solidarity and secrecy, backed always by the dueling code, that they committed the crime of the millennium.

and now, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of that crime, this epstein gang is doing it again, but bigger and better than anybody has ever seen!"

"we all hang together or we all hang separately" franklin