Incredibly, they were all great believers in same sex marriage, a massive federal bureaucracy, and banning coal…
That’s always a tough call, but reliably biased and dishonest Timothy Egan, one of the New York Times deep bench of shameless left-wing ideologues, has a likely winner with his essay, “The Founders Would Gag at Today’s Republicans: The cult of Trump has embraced values and beliefs that Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln abhorred.”
To begin with, the trick of claiming that the Founders’ approval or disapproval of any modern day policy or position is intellectually dishonest on its face, unless one is as historically ignorant as a brick, which is what con-artist pundits like Egan is counting on. It reminds me of when Bill Clinton (speaking of con artists) told a crowd that Thomas Jefferson would be shocked to find that Americans today didn’t have national health care. That was the moment I realize that Bill would say literally anything, no matter how ridiculous, if he thought he could reap short-term gains and get away with it.
Needless to say (except that I do need to say it because of fatuous liars like Egan), the Founders would gag at the values and positions of both Democrats and Republicans, because they lived in a largely agrarian society 250 years ago. Washington executed a soldier who was caught engaged in homosexual activity. Same sex marriage? Abortion? Transgender rights? The Founders didn’t believe that women should be able to own property or vote: how does Egan dare play the game of cherry-picking the Republican beliefs that they would consider “un-American”?
The op-ed is a masterpiece of selective reporting. Republicans, Egan says, are anti-First Amendment because almost 50% say in polls (and you know how accurate they are) that government should be able to shut down “biased or inaccurate media.” He doesn’t mention that Democrats and their “base” groups are far more supportive of punishing “hate speech” than Republicans. For example, another survey found that 51% of Democrats support a law that requires Americans to use transgender people’s preferred gender pronouns. I suspect that prospect alone might provoke a stroke in Tom, George, and John.
Egan uses Thomas Jefferson to show that President Trump’s fury at the modern press is “un-American,” but somehow neglects to mention that another indispensible Founder, John Adams, signed into law a Sedition Act that made it illegal, among other actions, to “write, print, utter or publish…any false, scandalous and malicious writing…with intent to defame the…government.” No Republican worth listening to supports that kind of law—I guess today’s Republicans would gag at the Founders, too, and justly so.
Egan also cites Lincoln as one of his moral exemplars, who had newspaper editors arrested and jailed during the Civil War. Go ahead and read this mess, which should have made Times editors gag as well as any Times reader with a 10th grade education. Egan applies the Founders’ attitudes toward immigration, at a time when they were trying to fill a vast expanse of territory with people and immigration laws were both unnecessary and practically impossible, to current issues involved in the wave of illegal immigration. He thinks that conservative claims that the United States should be guided by Judeo-Christian morality would be repugnant to Founders who ladled their speeches and public documents and monuments with references to God, whose concept of the American community assumed a central role for churches.
In short, the one thing it is fair to say about Egan’s op-ed is that the intellectually rigorous Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Franklin would have found it embarrassingly illogical and foolish, particular Egan’s deliberate fantasy that any kind of valid analogy can be made between the late 18th Century and the 21st.
They might even have gagged at it.
Ethics Alarms 
BIAS MAKES YOU STUPID, as you always say. I can’t believe that Egan is that historically ignorant, so it is clearly bias-based. And really, if he’s true to his so-called ideology, he should NOT be using slave-holding founders as exemplars of anything positive. Today’s political correctness faults those men — of their times — and demeans their contributions. Assuming what the Founder’s would “think” of America today is the height of hubris. Unknown. And stupid. And only self-serving.
Endless stupidity. Not smart enough to know they’re not smart enough.
Any cite for this?
I was afraid you’d ask that. I’ll try to find it.
I have found evidence that Washington approved the dismissal of a man found guilty at court-martial of attempting homosexual sodomy with another man out of the army. That seems to be historically supported.
I find evidence of laws against sodomy (or “buggery”) in some of the colonies punished by the death penalty. But my admittedly limited research doesn’t show evidence that Washington ordered a man executed for sodomy.
Still, your point still stands. The man above was court-martialed and “drummed” out of the service, an ignominious public shaming that would abhor the modern liberal (and arguably most conservatives).
Thanks, Glenn. I cannot find the reference in my files that I was sure I had, so in the absence of such, I’m going to correct the post.The Mandella Effect.
Did they have that back then?
Washington executed a soldier who was caught engaged in homosexual activity.
Cite?
I wonder if this Egan punk opposes these.
Regarding abortion, it was completely legal in the United States for the first forty-five years. (By sharp contrast, the forty-fifth anniversary of Roe v. Wade was only last year.) Even today, there are more legal restrictions on abortion than there were when independence was declared. And even back then, people were debating the ethics of abortion (which was why Connecticut bothered to restrict the practice in 1821).
There are no sex-specific second-person pronouns in English. The onkly way someone could know about being mispronouned is if they hear about it from someone else.
I am sure campaign finance laws could be used to shut down biased or inaccurate media.
Now let us consider the Dem side.
on the Dem side, we have people advocating that colleges expel people for suspicion of rape if there is only a 20% chance of guilt.
On the Dem side, we have the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights pretending to be the Supreme Court, coming up with completely ludicrous interpretations of Title IX such that it requires a preponderance of evidence standard when adjudicating sexual harassment claims, and that it prohibits cross-examination of witnesses.
On the Dem side, we have people arguing that rape is as common in college campuses as it is in the war-torn Congo region of Africa.
On the Dem side, we have the Justice Department threatening to punish schools for racial discrimination if they choose to punish misconduct.
On the Dem side, we have the same people supporting the EEOC suing businesses for running criminal background checks on the basis that it is racist, while supporting universal background checks for firearm purchases.
On the Dem side, we have the same people claiming that requiring a photo ID to vote is racist because it places a disparate burden on minorities, while simultaneously supporting universal background checks on firearm purchases, ignoring any concerns about a disparate impact on minorities
On the Dem side, we have accusations that the police are racist, while simultaneously claiming that these police officers be trusted with discretion to decide who may carry a concealed weapon.
On the Dem side, we have people claiming that an employer is imposing religion and denying access to women’s health if they refuse to offer health insurance that includes contraception without co-pay, even though it would be ludicrous to claim that employers are imposing their religion and denying access to women’s wine if they refuse to offer coupons for BevMo.
Would the above have caused the Founders to gag?
Abortion was legal, meaning there were no laws against it. Nobody thought there needed to be, because it was regarded as morally reprehensible. THere was no law against divorce, either, but the Founders would have gagged at it.
Egan doesn’t care what the Founding Fathers would have thought any more than he cared about John McCain or George H.W. Bush. People like him would reference Satan if it meant attacking Republicans (read: Donald Trump).
Yeah, but the Times has to have higher standards even for anti-Trump venom. That was ridiculous.
If we are doing retro-prognostications, I bet I could do better:
Disclaimer: the Founders would probably be a bit mystified at the technological advances in general.
They would not be surprised by the abolition of slavery. They would be half-surprised that it took a war to do it (“we put in an amendment process for pretty much this reason, people!)
They would probably be surprised at how much power the Supreme Court (the weakest branch) wields. Of course it only wields that much power because the other branches have gotten more powerful. To wit:
They would be surprised by the 16th Amendment (income tax), as it is a direct tax of the individual by the Federal Government, but okay (“yay, Amendment process).
Of course, money is power, so, with more tax money comes more power.
They would be completely baffled by the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators). That opens the Senate up to national influences, instead of influence from a small group of state legislators. That was kind of the whole point of the Senate: to represent the States, not its citizens.
But, you can’t pass a farm subsidy bill if senators answer to their legislatures.
Can’t get universal healthcare if Senators stand in the way.
But, you change the Senate selection process, you get popular candidates, supported by national appeal and no specific understanding of the needs of the State (Hello, Al Franken!)
The power grab of the Commerce Clause would be puzzling.
The Federal Criminal Code, as punitive as it is, would not meet with their approval.
While they would not like standing armies, but would be aghast at the left’s disaffection with the Defense Department; it was one of the things included in the Constitution. Congress gets to make war.
Same with immigration; Congress has the power to pass immigration laws. It can do pretty much anything. But, leftists think ICE is illegal and there should be no immigration laws.
It’s practically Bizarro-World: leftists don’t like it when the government does the things it was designed for, and insists that it do things it was never intended to handle.
If we want to talk about what the Founders would abhor, that discussion would be dominated by items from the progressive agenda.
-Jut
Well done. COTD.
Thanks, but I forgot to mention the electoral college.
-Jut
Oh, add it in a supplementary comment, and I’ll stitch it together.
The electoral college at issue is just one of many other issues that could be raised regarding progressives’ fundamental misunderstanding (or deliberate disregard) of the design of the Federal system. They look at representation in the Senate as fundamentally unfair, as Montana has one Senator for approximately 250,000 residents, while California has one Senator for its 27,500,000 residents. Of course, this completely ignores the fact that EACH state has TWO Senators. The electoral college reflects and imbalance in electoral votes by giving state electors in the same number as they have representation in both houses of Congress. This was by design and a popular election of the President would be deemed abhorrent by the Founders, as it would completely ignore the federalist structure of the government. Yet, too progressives, it seems self-evident that the President should be elected by the popular vote of the people. However, considering the federalist structure of the government, one could argue with equal force that the President should be elected by the popular vote of the states. Thus, while Clinton received approximately 3,000,000 more votes in the election, Trump won 10 more states than Clinton did; given the federalist structure of the government, those two measurements are of equal validity and are equally invalid. However, it would appear that the left would find the selection of the President according to the number of states won to be incomprehensible. As the electoral college represents a balance between the people and the states, the Founders would likely see the effort to eliminate the electoral college to be completely contrary to the intended structure of the government.
-Jut
Perfect.
Now these people claim that the Electoral College was all about slavery