Yesterday while listening to the Sean Hannity radio show a caller who identified himself as a liberal questioned why conservatives hold such a godlike reverence towards our Founding Fathers. After all these men were nothing but rich, white, slave owners who spoke of liberty and yet enslaved a people. You could sense the caller’s contempt towards our founders in his visceral tone. It had a healthy dose of arrogance seasoned with anger. He further went on to call conservatives unintelligent people who only cared about huge corporations. Mr. Hannity let the man continue on with his rant without saying a word. Finally the caller asked, “What do you have to say about that?” Paraphrasing Mr. Hannity’s reply, he said something to the likes of, sometimes the best thing to do is not to respond and let your words stand on their own. For a long time this has been a tactic of the left. They must demonize our founders. They do this so they can delegitimize the founders’ message.

Most of us living in the real world know our founders were not men without flaws. They struggled with same temptations we struggle with today. They made both good and bad decisions. They weren’t perfect and no matter what the left says, I still can’t find one conservative who believes they walked on water, healed the sick, and raised the dead. They were as flawed as we are today. But they were also good men of reason and virtue who were willing to sacrifice all they had to advance and secure individual liberty and freedom and this is the real target of the left.

For those on the far left, the notion of a group of men being willing to sacrifice everything they had to include their own lives if necessary in order to secure individual liberty for themselves and future generations is equivalent to sitting in a classroom and having someone run their nails across a chalkboard. It sends chills through their being. The reason for this is because individual liberty and the capacity of self-governance cannot coexist with their big government ideology. They seek to perfect the union through the power of government and not through the power of the people. Whereas the founders believed a more perfect union could only be achieved when individual liberty and freedom were secured through self-governance and a limited government. It’s a message, if explained correctly that resonates with all liberty loving people. This is the message the left is targeting and the best way to kill the message is to destroy the messenger.

This is why they dismiss our founders as rich, white, slaver owners who said one thing and did another. They supported individual liberty yet condoned slavery. You always hear them say the founders counted black people as only three fifths of a person. They didn’t even consider a black person a whole person. They will advance this as proof that the founders were not as virtuous and noble as history as portrayed them to be. Never once will they stop and ask why they did this. With a small amount of research they would discover that the southern states wanted to use slaves who had no rights as citizens as part of their population count so they could inflate their numbers and gain more representatives. By gaining more representatives they could then control the conversation about slavery at the federal level and this did not sit well with most of the founders who were against slavery. So in order to ratify the constitution a compromise was reached that led to slaves being counted as three fifths of a person. It actually shows you how the slavery issue was a deep concern of the founders. This simple truth collides with the anti-founders narrative that the left is trying to advance, so they just choose to ignore it. This is why they attack all documents and institutions that have our founders’ finger prints on them.

The most glaring example of this is how the left views the constitution. They see it as an antiquated document written by a bunch of rich, white, slave owners who couldn’t foresee or understand the complexities of our modern society. This is why they promote the idea that the constitution is a living and breathing document that must change as our society change. Forget about the amendment process, it can change just as easily as the wind can change direction. It’s like building a house and replacing the foundation with wheels. Forget the fact that the reason the constitution is such a timeless and remarkable document is because it’s the only document in history that limits the authority of a government. Unlike people on the left our founders were students of history and they knew all too well the propensity of rulers to grab power and impose their will on the people. So at the core of our constitution is the idea that human nature in regards to rulers must be checked and at times constrained because of the natural tendency of leaders to gravitate towards tyranny. Human nature does not change like technology and this is the brilliance behind the constitution. Again this line of thinking cannot coexist with the big government views of the left. This is why they demonize the founders and make them into men they simply were not. And what’s sad is more and more people are buying the garbage the left is selling because they don’t have the historical foundation to object to it.

We have a great deal of work ahead of us to reverse this trend. This anti-founder mindset is being advanced in our public schools, in our colleges and universities, and in our neighborhoods. So as you can see the mountain we must climb is high, but the reward when we reach the top just may lead to the salvation of our constitution, our nation and ourselves.

Liberty forever, freedom for all!

Original Post: The Sentry Journal