Tag: founding fathers

“Founding Founders.”

Ye gods and little fishes.

founding founders

The question is, will it stick around? That’s actually not immediately obvious. If White House staffers are simply being slapdash historical illiterates again, then sure, it’s going to get fixed to the “Founding Fathers” with all due speed. But on the other hand, this might actually be – God help us all – political correctness. “Founding Founders” is precisely the sort of tin-eared circumlocution that one would expect from a cadre that thinks that proper communication involves tying the English language to a chair, and then making it scream.

George Stephanopoulos thinks Ben Franklin isn’t a Founding Father?

Via Instapundit, Jeffrey Lord is having fun lecturing George Stephanopoulos by mentioning Founding Fathers who opposed slavery, contra Stephanopoulos’ rather ignorant statement here to Rep. Michele Bachmann:

For example earlier this year you said that the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence worked tirelessly to end slavery. Now with respect Congresswoman, that’s just not true.

We can go ’round and ’round about whether John Quincy Adams counts – I personally would have him count as one, or at least not quibble overmuch over it – but let’s talk about some non-Virginians, shall we?

  • Benjamin Franklin. If Ben Franklin isn’t a Founding Father, then the term is meaningless anyway. Long sympathetic to abolitionist views, he spent the last years of his life (and the first years of the public) as an open advocate for abolition and integration.
  • John Adams. Also on every list of Founding Fathers that there are. Balance his reluctance to push for too-public a dispute over slavery with his writing the Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts portion of the Massachusetts Constitution.
  • John Jay. Likewise on the lists (also, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court). Despite being a slaveowner himself, Jay pushed for abolition and manumission in New York for over twenty years; he finally succeeded in passing manumission legislation as Governor.

Continue reading George Stephanopoulos thinks Ben Franklin isn’t a Founding Father?