Speaking
to a women’s evangelical conference in April of 2010, Sarah Palin defended the
union of church and state, saying that our Founding Fathers “were believers [in
God]” (Sargent 2010). Palin’s statement is in line with much of political
conservatism in the United States; there is a propensity to anchor the party
line with an invocation of the Founding Fathers, but the Right are not solely
responsible. In response to Palin, only days later, liberal television pundit Keith
Olbermann retorted, quoting Thomas Jefferson in an 1823 letter to John Adams.
The quote reveals that Jefferson regarded the story of Jesus and the virgin
birth as fantastical as the Roman myth of Minerva born from the head of Jupiter
(Cappon 1959). “A believer?!” says Olbermann, as if Jefferson is solely
representative of the Founders.
The
sacredness of the Fathers is intriguing because the mythos surrounding the
founding of the United States is one ingrained into every schoolchild. Most
Americans are familiar with the stories of George Washington cutting down the
cherry-tree or Paul Revere riding across the countryside to warn colonists of
the invading British army, and it is because of this that our understanding of
the Founding Fathers is one that begins in legend – unverifiable anecdotes
based on historically documented human beings. Both the allure and
misunderstanding of these men have made summoning their presence an acceptable
cultural practice during political discourse, despite the fact that the
American people may not be as versed in the historic facts as they ought to be.
On the other hand, that dissonance is irrelevant; the ritual and practice, as
pointless as it may seem to the outsider, is part of the culture and rightly
remains so until something changes that might do away with such rhetoric. The collection
of men and women who contributed to the founding of the United States is an
American legend, and as such, it is to be regarded as part of the folklore from
which much of American patriotism and values are derived. I call this
collection the American Pantheon.
Ancestor Worship
There
is a cultural phenomenon whereby the dead are venerated by the living,
generally in order to ensure a sustained happiness for the deceased in their
afterlife. It is often believed, for instance in a “Chinese cosmological
worldview,” that even after death, one has an interest in the wellbeing and
events of those kin that were left behind (Khun Eng 2006:247). Rituals, both
funerary and annual, are performed to remember the lives of the dead, but also
as a means of communication (e.g. Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico and
Central America) (Nutini 1991:772).
Totemism
is also a means of honoring the dead. By identifying one’s self in allegiance
with a particular apical ancestor, and acting in accordance with what one
perceives are the values of that ancestor, the deceased has gained a sort of
life-after-death, via a living proxy (Vail et al 2010; Palmer et al 2008:731).
Because of the apical nature of totemism, it is likely that the imagery of such
ancestors is based upon people that lived many generations ago, rather than the
recently deceased (see Kennedy 1984; Keen 2004). In both cases, the dead are
considered to retain a sort of interactivity in the lives of the family, from
influencing decisions to manipulating fortune and health – directly (Keller
2008:659) and indirectly (Palmer et al 2008:731).
The American
Pantheon
There
is a parallel between totemism and the phenomena that surround the
establishment and maintenance of the American Pantheon. One of the most obvious
is that of kinship. Americans call those that founded our political and legal
system fathers – they are the apical ancestors of that which we celebrate and
proselytize to the rest of the world. The American folklore of the Pantheon is
steeped in a rich national cosmology – not just the “creation story” of our
country, but also that of liberty, democracy, and escape from tyranny. Even in
the English orthography of the phrase “Founding Fathers,” the letter f is
capitalized, bestowing tribute to the collective as one would when speaking of
the Christian god, God. It is as if to distinguish this group of founders from
another less notable group of founding fathers.
Another
element of the Pantheon that lends to the ease of manipulation is that of
membership; the Founding Fathers are not often clearly defined. What is clear
(from the number of times one may hear their names in the news media) is that
the core constituent of the Pantheon – the Titans, if you will – are Thomas
Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander
Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. These men were either actively engaged
architects of the systems that would eventually become the United States, or
they played a singular (though major) role in the legend of its founding. They
spring to mind at the very mention of “Founding Fathers,” virtually by way of
apotheosis. And yet, there are many more to add to the list. Often, the
Founding Fathers are invoked during debates concerning the Constitution, thus a
possible defining feature could be that the Founding Fathers were present at the
Constitutional Convention. Many Constitutional arguments, in which the Founding
Fathers make an appearance, are related to the Bill of Rights – a document that
was not ratified until two years after the United States Constitution, and thus
the definition of Founding Fathers expands yet again. All in all, one could
argue that the Founding Fathers are comprised of between seven men and a few
hundred men (and some women). In reference to the example above, it would be
pointless, with so many people, to claim that all of these people were solely
Christians or Deists. Likewise, it is futile to assume that all of the Founding
Fathers were pro- or anti-government, though Ron Paul has said that “the
Founders were Libertarians” (“Ron Paul: The Founding Fathers Were Libertarians”
2011).
Dissonance
With
regards to today’s political discourse, the absolute identity of each Father is
irrelevant, except when it is convenient. Ultimately, the American Pantheon is
a faceless symbol of revolution, reinvention, and resistance of tyranny. Only
when a pundit, politician, or activist needs to attribute a specifically
salient and translatable anecdote, are particular Fathers conjured. Despite so
many people constituting the American ancestral spirit (even as little as
seven), one may be called upon to represent the whole, at the sacrifice of not
just historical accuracy, but epistemological clarity. For instance, one could
argue that if the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would resist the
establishment of a national bank. Specifically, Thomas Jefferson opposed the
idea of a national bank, thus if one wanted to defend that argument, one may
cite Jefferson’s stance. On the other hand, another Father of the core group,
Alexander Hamilton, was for the establishment of a national bank, and likewise
one could cite him if they wanted to argue that today, the Founding Fathers
would not resist such an issue.
This
is a fairly simple and sterile example of the dissonance between political
rhetoric and historic context. As one considers more and more figures that
qualify as members of the Pantheon, the variation of opinion increases, and the
accuracy of a single individual’s political stance as representative of the
whole decreases. This fact is irrelevant to the person that may cite a member
of the Pantheon, as the very phrase “Founding Fathers” (and any of the names
associated with it) seems to be sacred, and generally unquestionable.
Political
Dichotomy
As
it was discussed above, the Founding Fathers exist as a single entity. If, in
the course of political rhetoric, the Pantheon needs to be fragmented, it is
generally into individuals. Rarely, if ever, do the pundits and politicians in
the mainstream cable network media break the Fathers into their political
parties. Thus, upon conjuring the Fathers as a whole, or a single individual,
one has called upon them to represent their “side” of an issue. Because of the
nature of our political culture – one of binary opposition – the invocation of
the Fathers often accompanies such words as: for-against; intended-did not
intend; support-oppose; and would-would not. (Also, one may hear the phrase
“rolling in their graves,” which seems to reinforce the conception of ancestor
worship, specifically that one who has died is still alive and is affected by
decisions of the living.) To assign such “on-off” qualities to the Fathers
ignores their rich cultural, social, religious, economic, and political
diversity, and it cheapens the long hard process that it took to establish a
sovereign country from nearly nothing. This oversight is irrelevant, however,
because American political culture endorses such a view, and that cultural
practice keeps the process cohesive in that it is constantly reminding the American
people of their “common ancestors.”
A
simple observational review of political media (blogs, news articles, punditry,
etc.) seems to suggest that there are two possible reasons that the Founding
Fathers are either invoked individually or as a whole, but never as their
intermediate components (e.g. political parties). By avoiding demarcating the
Founders into parties that might roughly parallel today’s liberal and
conservative wings, one does not have to sacrifice a Father they might
otherwise be able to utilize. For example, if one were to call upon the
Anti-Federalists in support of small government, binary opposition may force
one to ignore that John Adams, a Federalist, is credited with designing the
“Separation of Powers” model – that is, separate legislative, executive, and
judicial branches. Secondly, and more importantly to the strength of political
rhetoric, breaking the Founders into groups only weakens one’s argument, and
sidesteps the entire strategy of American ancestor worship in the first place.
Without invoking the Pantheon, a pundit may be left defending a view from their
position at either end of the political teeter-totter – an unimpressive
position indeed, and invoking a specific “side” of the Fathers doesn’t change
the bias of that position. However, by rallying the Founders as a whole to
one’s side of the argument, a pundit can easily make that argument from
authority (as well as patriotism and tradition), which is more or less the
whole point of using rhetoric.
Conclusion
The
American Pantheon, a legendary collection of human beings, founded this country
over 230 years ago. They solved their own problems with solutions that were
untested, risky, and sometimes cutting edge; democracy on the scale of America
was experimental. Today, however, it is difficult to apply the same logic and
problem solving to a society that is faces 21st century issues (though not for
lack of trying [“The Founding Fathers Didn’t Want Gay Marriage” 2008]) –
abortion, gay rights, universal health care, nuclear proliferation, tension in
the Middle East, and globalism to name a few. Not only is the wisdom of the
Fathers outdated, but it was flawed and inconsistent when they were alive. And
yet they are still conjured in defense of political, social, and economic
issues, despite being roughly 200 years dead. Even Thomas Jefferson (1816)
himself recognized the weakness of ancestor worship, saying:
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead (Fischer 2010; Peterson 1988).
None
of this matters, however, and that is why the Pantheon is an object of patriotic
American ancestor worship. It is tempting to wonder what the Fathers may think today
of the institution which they worked so hard to establish, but ultimately that
curiosity is futile and without purpose, other than to adhere to an American
cultural tradition. While a cold look at this style of ancestor worship may
reveal that it is simply a distraction from the immediate attention that our
political, social, and economic problems may deserve, it may also be a
necessary catalyst of both American culture (by way of folklore) and also a
stopgap revitalization movement in which those that wish to do so, may return
to a more traditional and simplified perception of the nation’s problems. In
this light, despite the media’s divisive and polarizing manipulation of the
Founding Fathers, this somewhat affinal, kinship-based ancestor worship is
actually a mechanism for a greater social solidarity.
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