Revere The Founding Fathers

They remind us who really built America

Provocative titles are always a great way to draw in readers. The “post-liberal” Compact knew what it was doing when the magazine named a recent essay: “Forget the Founding Fathers.” This was obviously going to outrage its mostly right-leaning audience, and sure enough it did. Conservatives lit into the article on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Despite the article’s abrasive title, its arguments are worth taking seriously. It was written by Michael Lind, a writer who has switched political allegiances throughout his life. He was considered a conservative in the 90s, but moved closer to the Left during the George W. Bush administration. In the 2000s, he wrote a book that deplored the racism of President Bush (seriously). Lind is now back on the Right and in greater fashion than ever before. His arguments that conservatives should ditch old platitudes embrace populist economics and the state are more popular than ever. 

Lind may be back in the good graces of the American Right, but he still has an ax to grind with conservative idols. One of those is reverence for the Founding Fathers. To those who ask what the Founders would’ve thought about modern problems, Lind says the response should be: “Who cares?” He believes this “Founder-ism” is no longer needed for contemporary times. He argues it was specifically created to support America’s Cold War priorities: 

Modern Founders-ism is a relic of the second half of the 20th century. It served two purposes for the American nation-state: providing a nonracist definition of the American nation during the civil-rights revolution, and supplying the American state with a missionary creed that could rival Marxism-Leninism during the Cold War.

Prior to the popularity of Founder-ism, American elites favored a more “racialist” conception of America that based our greatness on the Anglo-Saxon founding stock. But World War II made this view unacceptable. A more universalist nationality was sought after the war: 

The Nazis’ genocidal and eugenic policies discredited the racism, Nordicism, and anti-Semitism shared by much of the Anglo-American elite. After 1945, the idea that “real” Americans were the heirs of ancient Aryan or Indo-European tribes from the Eurasian steppes, by way of the forests of Germany and the British Isles, was dumped and replaced by a new, more universalist definition of American nationality. To be “American” was now equated with having a deep personal belief in the ideals of the founding.

He notes the shortcomings of this outlook, yet it proved useful for those seeking to change the nation in the Cold War era:

In practice, the equation of American identity with political belief makes no sense. Individuals in other countries can believe in the ideals of the American founding, however defined, but that doesn’t make them US citizens, absent legal immigration and naturalization. Nor is there any procedure to strip citizenship from Americans who think that King George or Jefferson Davis was the good guy and Washington or Lincoln the villain of American history. But this democratic universalist redefinition of American identity, falsely ascribed to America’s Founding Fathers as a group, served a useful social purpose during the civil-rights revolution and the dismantling of anti-Jewish quotas in Ivy League universities.

At the same time that it provided an alternative to the traditional Teutonic Protestant version of American national identity, postwar democratic universalism was worked up into an evangelical secular creed that could contest Marxism-Leninism in the Cold War struggle to win the “hearts and minds” of people in postcolonial Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The Federalist Papers and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America were recast as sacred scriptures to be promoted abroad and taught to children at home.

The Left, however, no longer has a use for the Founders. The “technocratic progressive strain on the American center left” prefers modern social science over the words of dead white men. The far left condemns the Founders simply for being dead white men. That leaves Founder-ism just to the Right. Lind isn’t thrilled with that. He scornfully writes that establishment conservatives:

have privileged 1787 over 1776. They have treated the federal Constitution as the equivalent of the Ten Commandments, teaching the American people, “Thou Shalt Not Have Nice Things,” like a living wage, labor unions, guaranteed access to inexpensive health care, or adequate social insurance. The Founders thus become ventriloquist dummies for rich donors who fund fusionist magazines that few but the same donors read.

This is why he believes we must dispense with the reverence. In Lind’s view, founderism is now exploited to support the stupidity of Conservative Inc. It’s better to move on and focus on what’s best for Americans without the sacred aura around the men who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Many on our side would find much to agree with here. But there are serious problems with the argument. 

For one, reverence for the founders wasn’t a post-WW2 invention. It was prevalent throughout American history. Construction of the Washington Monument began in 1848. Both sides of the Civil War appealed to the Founders’ and their opinions. The Colonial Revival movement, which inspired great interest in the settlers and the founders, reached its zenith in the 1920s. That trend supported America’s infatuation with Nordicism and Anglo-Saxon origins. Construction of the Jefferson Memorial began before American entry into World War II. One can argue about the degree and type of founder veneration pre-WW2, but the writings and actions of the revolutionary generation were important to Americans of all eras. 

It is true America crafted a new national identity based on ideology rather than race after the war. But founderism wasn’t the crucial element to this change. Founderism doesn’t counter the Teutonic Protestant version of American national identity. In fact, it reinforces it. What better way to support the idea your nation was founded by Anglo-Saxons than to emphasize the Nordic Founders themselves. The new ideological conception of America relied on stripping the Founders of their ethno-cultural background. It imagined them as just random individuals who happened to love liberty and hate despotism. Their ideas are what mattered, not their identities. This universalized them to make them more acceptable to non-WASPs. 

But POC were never going to see themselves in the Founders. They were always going to view these great men as white men unworthy of veneration. The 1619 Project, the primary example of modern left-wing historiography, takes the ideological conception of America much further than the Cold War casting. It sees the Founders as evil white bigots. The new protagonists of American history are blacks while whites serve as the villains. Yet, despite this contempt for the Founders, the 1619 Project purports to uphold the ideals of the Founding. It just transfers their origin and advancement to POC. 

Lind’s main point is to critique conservatism and its subservience to antiquated notions about the government and the economy. He sees founderism as primarily supporting tax cuts for the rich and the elimination of government entitlements. He seems to think that if Americans moved on from caring what the Founding Fathers thought, we can finally achieve serious reforms in the country.

In reality, no one venerating the Founders would just aid the Left’s goal of replacing the historic American people. Founderism acts as an impediment to the mission. If Americans still greatly care about the men who created this country, they’re less likely to celebrate the racial transformation of the nation. 

Founderism reminds Americans of who built this country and made it great. We weren’t founded by random individuals operating in a vacuum, nor were BIPOC responsible for American greatness. We were made great by the Anglo-Protestant founding stock. If that people and their culture is gone, America is no longer America. 

Reverence for the Founders is now exclusively a right-wing phenomenon, and for good reason. It illuminates politically incorrect truths about this country. That’s why the Left wants to tear down the Founding Fathers and replace them with minority fantasies. To that alternative, we simply say “no.”