Anybody who spends enough time digging around in the graveyards of
American political theory knows about “Founderstein”—an ideological monstrosity
that, like Frankenstein’s monster, borrows bits and pieces from those safely
dead—from, that is, the the speeches, published essays, letters, and journals
of any number of different Founding Fathers slapped together with absolutely no
concern for context, rhetorical intent, or the tremendous differences between
the individual Founders.
The most common Modern version of Founderstein looks something
like this:
· Thomas
Paine’s belief in small government
· Patrick
Henry’s religious devotion
· Benjamin
Franklin’s scientific mind
· Thomas
Jefferson’s classical learning
· Alexander
Hamilton’s support of business interests
· George
Washington’s leadership vision
· John
Adams’ incorruptible integrity
· James
Madison’s love of the Constitution
One could certainly be
forgiven a bit of idolatry in the face of such a political saint! That such a
fellow never existed might dampen our enthusiasm a little bit, but this is
pretty much the central-casting version of all of the “Founding Fathers” in
books like Tim Lahay’s Faith
of Our Founding Fathers, Larry Schweikart’s What Would the Founders Say? And just about anything by Glenn Beck,
Mark Levin, or Sean Hannity.
However, if we take these same eight men and combine another set of
characteristics, we end up with a very different Founderstein—one just as
monstrous as the first but designed for a different kind of political argument:
· Thomas
Paine’s strident atheism
· Patrick
Henry’s implacable opposition to the Constitution
· Benjamin
Franklin’s sexual adventurism
· Thomas
Jefferson’s deism
· Alexander
Hamilton’s desire for large, centralized governments
· George
Washington’s lifelong ownership of slaves
· John
Adams’ naïveté
· James
Madison’s shifting political allegiances
But
this creature never existed either. “The Founding Fathers” were not all
well-educated, devout Christians who sought to limit the power of government
any more than they were slave-owning atheists who wanted to expand the power of
government. They were actual human beings with insights and moral lapses,
virtues and vices, and, perhapsm most importantly, little ability to agree with
each other about much of anything. That is how human beings operate in this
world.
The Founderstein phenomenon, however, does not come from this
world. It comes from the world of myth, where virtues are amplified and
disagreements are suppressed. And it is only by invoking the world of myth that
anybody can say “the Founding Fathers believed. . . .” and end up with anything
like a coherent argument. Other than a vague feeling that the American colonies
were better off ruling themselves than being ruled by the British, there is not
a single belief that can be attributed to everybody who can be reasonably
termed a “Founding Father.”
The fallacy in the Founderstein phenomenon lies in the fact that
it relies entirely on three false assumptions:
1. That
the term “Founders” represents a specific group of men (women need not apply)
who have been universally recognized as the framers of the Constitution and the
designers of the government that has endured for more than 230 years.
2. That
these men agreed with each other on all, or even some, of the major political
issues of their day, thereby making a quote by any one of them adequate proof
of “what the Founders believed.”
3. That
these men—some of whom lived into their 90s—held consistent opinions about
important issues during their entire public lives.
These assumptions are not just false; they are all profoundly wrong.
Together, they create an ahistorical, one-dimensional version of the Founding
Fathers that is good only for creating proof-text arguments—strings of
quotations that pay no attention to the ideological differences of the Founders
or the rhetorical contexts of their words. Want to prove that the Founding
Fathers were orthodox Christians? Easy. Quote a line from one of Hamilton’s
youthful love sonnets, a phrase from one of George Washington’s ghostwritten
speeches, and something that ended up in the Kentucky Constitution that may
have been put there by Madison. Want to prove that they were all non-Christian
deists? Grab Franklin’s autobiography, Jefferson’s letters to Joseph Priestley,
and quote liberally from Paine’s The
Age of Reason. It's easy, it's fun, and no matter which way you
decide to go, somebody else has already looked up the quotes. All you you have
to do is Google.
And reading is hard work.
