The week before America’s 250th birthday, former president Barack Obama took the opportunity to diss our Founding Fathers. Compelled to cite a negative in their collective legacy—i.e., one he claims to be inseparable from their contradictions—Obama proffered,
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I think sometimes we get confused in thinking that these two stories are separate. They’re intertwined, right? Which is why it’s possible for me to be a great admirer of George Washington, and also acknowledge he was a slaveholder.
He added, “That does not negate [Washington’s] greatness; it simply acknowledges that there’s a profound, deep flaw in these Founding Fathers who were also geniuses and gave us these tools.”
A flaw for which our Founders perhaps can be held accountable is their lack of hindsight, although Obama, with his criticism, demonstrates a flaw of his own. He and his fellow critics ignore an historical fact about slavery back then—i.e., the institution had already been embraced for thousands of years. Thus, when our Founders wrote our Constitution, slavery was still deemed appropriate for human survival, especially as the world had become more dependent upon agrarian societies. The misfortune for blacks in America at that time was that they were the “slave race of choice.” But the institution’s acceptance is evident throughout history in numerous cultures, including Native American and African tribes.
In our Declaration of Independence, while proclaiming “all men are created equal,” black slaves were not. But the Founders were only acting upon the accepted knowledge of their day. The wrongfulness of slavery was only revealed by virtue of hindsight. And, when that hindsight evolved, the wisdom of the Founders became evident.
Recognizing societal changes in America would occur, they memorialized a way to implement them under the Constitution. They ensured the document safeguarded the right to make future adjustments through amendments—such as the 13th, which would ban the institution of slavery in 1865. What Obama et al. expected the Founders to know in 1776 was not recognized for almost nine more decades—which is still not recognized in Africa, where the slave trade is booming once again. (On the eve of Fort Sumter, the enslaved population was around 4 million; today in Africa, that number is 7 million.)
Ironically, Obama’s own family, on his mother’s side, was caught up in the belief of their day about the institutional acceptance of slavery, benefitting from such ownership. Thus, in his recent criticism of our Founding Fathers and on the basis of his own family’s historical slave ownership, he was not without sin in casting stones at them.
For modern day activists, claiming outrage about slave owners who embraced an institution historically deemed acceptable—one that had enslaved numerous racial populations—is, in itself, outrageous.
But Obama is not alone in casting stones. We have seen activists call for statues of the Founders to be removed, vandalizing them when they were not; or the names of schools named after them changed; or their quotes removed; etc. Promoting “cancel culture” instead of history involving this brilliant and courageous group of men in our history who, obviously like all of us, had their flaws, is unconscionable.
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And it goes further. Cancel culture activists have not only targeted the Founders but our entire early history as well by rewriting it. The 1619 Project emerged as an effort by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who went to work for the New York Times (NYT) Magazine in 2015, to reframe the story of America’s origin. As 2019 approached, they raised the claim 1776 was not America’s birthday—1619 was.
They argued 1619 was the effective date because the first slave ship arrived in the colonies that year. Apparently of relatively little historic importance was the fact the ship in question was Spanish; it had been captured by a British privateer, and rerouted to the colonies where the slaves were then sold to colonists. But other modern day contributors, including journalists, historians, and even poets, became infatuated by the 1619 story line, suggesting the start of slavery in 1619 went on to shape various aspects of American society. Thus, the NYT promoted 2019 as America’s 400th birthday with Hannah-Jones minimizing the Founders’ greatness and underscoringing their flaws.
Sadly, adding to the cancel culture mindset is one of our most-beloved institutions—the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History (NMAH). A report—released in time for the 250th birthday—concluded that the NMAH had been hijacked by a “radical, activist ideology that is fundamentally opposed to telling the noble, honest story of the great country we know and love.”
While the report cites several key reasons for this, among them is the failure to recognize our Founders. It disappointingly noted a “visitor to the Museum today will find no major exhibit dedicated to America’s Founding era, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, other Founding Fathers, the Continental Congress, the Pilgrims, the Puritans, or major moments of the American Revolution, such as Washington’s crossing of the Delaware.”
The White House criticizes the current NMAH leadership as it has “explicitly adopted an ideological framework that no longer treats the American story as a shared national inheritance to be taught or celebrated, but as a political instrument to divide, dispirit, and discourage our citizens.”
Despite what our Founders courageously achieved, setting us on a path to freedoms that have only grown for over two centuries now, their critics still fail to grasp that these historic figures were not time travelers who could appreciate the changing times the future would bring! Ignoring what was acceptable knowledge of that day concerning the propriety of slavery, modern day critics are like the spoiled child who, having received the unique gift (freedom), voice disappointment over what was not included.
Perhaps in 2076, on the occasion of America’s 300th birthday, surviving critics of our Founders will finally understand just how ridiculous their claims were. Hopefully by then, a future generation of Americans will have stepped up to the plate, expressing greater appreciation for the gift we now hold—freedoms only evolving from the sacrifices of our Founders under the conditions they faced at that time.
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