The most famous (yet underreported in the mainstream press) example of the liberals' assaults against the Constitution by way of the Founding Fathers occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana in late 1997. Declaring that "George Washington has about as much meaning as David Duke" to black students today and asking, "Would a Jew let his child go to a school named after Adolf Hitler?", "civil rights" leader Carl Galmon (of the remarkably named Louisiana Committee Against Apartheid) succeeded in his campaign to change the name of George Washington Elementary School to Dr. Charles Richard Drew Elementary School. On October 27, 1997, the Orleans Parish School Board voted unanimously for the name change. This was more important to them than the fact that a great number of students in the parish (more than 90% at one school) were performing woefully beyond accepted reading levels. This absurdly disturbing decision was in fact the culmination of a widespread liberal campaign to degrade this great nation's Founding Fathers and in so doing to deny the legacy of individualism and freedom fought for and won by our ancestors over two hundred years ago. This was not the first school renamed in Orleans parish, though--it was in fact the 27th school to be renamed in New Orleans in a period of just five years. Back in 1992, the school board set a policy prohibiting schools from being named after "former slave owners or others who did not respect equal opportunity for all." At the time, 49 out of 121 schools were named after slave owners. Early casualties were schools named for Confederates: Jefferson Davis Elementary became Ernest Morial (a black mayor of New Orleans) School. A school named for Robert E. Lee is now named in honor of black astronaut Ronald McNair. P.G.T. Beauragard Junior High is now Thurgood Marshall Middle School. Expanding its scope, the board changed the name of a school honoring Marie Couvent, the owner of an orphanage, who, while black, also owned slaves. The big guns were brought out, however, albeit silently in the night, when the sights were trained on the father of our country.
George Washington was no evil slaveholder. Historical documents clearly show that George Washington, while he did inherit and own slaves , sincerely wanted to see slavery abolished--in 1786, for example, Washington wrote that "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]." His will provided for the release of all his slaves upon the death of his wife, and Martha Washington in fact freed those slaves about a year after her husband died. Having expressed such views privately, however, Washington knew that the abolition of slavery could not be done quickly and certainly not during his lifetime. The nation was in its infancy, and any attempt to abolish slavery at that time would certainly have fractured the new nation irrevocably. Had the War Between the States taken place in the 1790s instead of the 1860s, the new United States would clearly have been stillborn, and both sides would have been at the mercy of Britain, France, or any other powerful foreign nation with an interest in the great resources found in this country. The liberal argument is that our Founding Fathers "didn't really mean it" when they established principles espousing individual liberty and freedom.
A man should be judged by his ideals as much as (if not more so) his practices. After all, isn't "good government" supposed to be based on compromise these days? Compromise, I would argue, forces equality by making everyone equally unhappy (sounds a lot like communism, doesn't it?). What Democrats or Republicans are ever really satisfied or happy about a new law? None of them truly are because, in order to get some of what they wanted, they had to forego other things they wished for. If ever a political problem necessitated and defined "compromise," it was slavery. Throughout the early 19th century, both the North and South were unhappy about the state of the peculiar institution, albeit for opposite reasons. Should we condemn the second and third generations of American leaders for not having done more to eliminate slavery during their lifetimes? Should we condemn the likes of Harriet Tubman for not doing more to help the plight of slaves and for not helping to free more of them than she did? Such ideas are ridiculous--yet this is in many ways the same argument being used to attack George Washington. It wasn't enough that he personally, in principle, opposed slavery--no, since he didn't singlehandedly eliminate a system deeply ingrained into half of the original colonies, we should now consider him a racist and unredeemable character. This is patently absurd. In the context of these events, even Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist, is not safe. After all, Douglass praised the Founding Fathers; he clearly recognized that the greatest argument against slavery and for personal liberty rested in the very Declaration of Independence and Constitution that liberals today want to do away with.
If today's liberals want to judge the actions and ignore the ideals of individuals, I cannot help but think this puts them in a quandary in terms of some of the men and women they glorify. Martin Luther King, a preacher of all things, committed heavy plagiarism in writing his doctoral dissertation; he was also guilty of adultery, one of the most horrible sins I myself can imagine. When King's name comes up, though, no one condemns him for what many would consider depraved actions; what we hear about are his dreams and his ideals. I also have to mention Abraham Lincoln. It is almost comically ironic that Abraham Lincoln is so adored by liberals when Washington is condemned by them. Lincoln was clearly a white supremacist; in fact, he personally wanted all blacks returned to Africa. The Emancipation Proclamation, his great beneficent act to free the slaves, was in fact a war measure ("a fit and necessary war measure for supressing [sic] said rebellion," quoting the document itself). Its intent was clearly to disrupt the internal governments and societies of the South and in so doing disrupt the Confederate war effort, especially in areas like South Carolina where the black population was very large. This great act did not, it is important to remember, free the slaves in the border states who had refrained from joining the Confederacy, nor did it, in point of fact, free the slaves in Southern areas already under Union control.
Clearly, George Washington was a more noble man than Abraham Lincoln. In this day and age, though, actions often mean everything and ideas mean nothing (a gift of the Clinton legacy). Thus, Abe Lincoln's action of freeing the slaves, despite the less than idealistic reasons for the act and the clearly racist attitudes of the man behind the act, serve to win Lincoln a special place in the hearts and minds of liberals, but Washington's ownership of slaves whom he inherited, treated well, and made provisions for freeing, brand him an evil racist despite his personal antislavery sentiments which are clearly expressed in his private writings.
If great numbers of us do not join together and resist such actions by today's liberals, if we don't stand firm for the ideas this country was founded on, if we fail to insist that the true character of a person and not his actions (or, worse, the appearances of his actions, which are often grossly misleading) is the true determinant of his/her honor and respect, then our children and grandchildren will never learn who George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the other Founding Fathers ever were. When they are asked to write a report in school about the Constitution, they will read it as a foreign, archaic document meaning nothing to them, and they will be forced by the liberals who determine the school agenda to deconstruct all of the basic principles originally espoused in it and explain why each of those guarantees of freedom and liberty for all (yes, for all) were in fact racist, elitist attempts to corrupt the body politic by spreading such dangerous ideas as individualism, freedom of speech and thought, and equal opportunity for all. My friends, we must fight just as hard today as our Founding Fathers did in their time for the Constitutional rights and freedoms bestowed upon every American (be they liberals or conservatives); if we stand idly by and watch our history being rewritten, we will prove ourselves unworthy of the freedoms we will soon have lost.
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