Beyond the Founding Fathers
Kathy Peiss
Roy F. & Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History
I am not here to diss the founding fathers, not with Benjamin Franklin nearby, watching from pedestals and park benches. Instead I ask, why are we so obsessed with the founders, and what does this obsession say about us? Their biographies top bestseller lists. And one recent book asks, playing on a familiar Christian bumper sticker, “What Would the Founding Fathers Do?” as if 18th-century gentlemen could provide insight into stem cell research, gay marriage, women’s rights, and Social Security reform.
All examinations of the past are simultaneously and often unconsciously reflections about the present. The obsession with the founders reflects a yearning for virtue and clarity in a time of moral muddle, political unraveling, and the failure of leadership. If we recall at once that the founding fathers wrote slavery into the Constitution, perhaps the greatest political failure of American history, we might turn our attention away from the great men of the past to the history of institutions, political processes, and the impact of culture. Reverence for the founding fathers makes it harder for us to ask whether parts of the system they established might be broken, and how they might be fixed. Thank you.