President Donald Trump has no filter. But every so often his ill-advised attacks are worth exploring. The President in a recent press conference dinged Founding Father and former president George Washington.
“Look, if we brought George Washington here and we said, we have George Washington, the Democrats would vote against him,” Donald Trump said. “Just so you understand. And he may have had a bad past, who knows, you know? He may have had some—I think accusations made. Didn’t he have a couple of things in his past? George Washington would be voted against 100 percent by Schumer and the con artists. I mean 100 percent. 100 percent. So it really doesn’t matter from their standpoint.”
Well, is that true? Of course, it is. Donald Trump tells the truth every so often. Rick Shenkman, the publisher of the History News Network and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History and Political Animals: How Our Stone Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics explains.
While Washington was treated as a hero during most of American history he came in for a drubbing during the cynical 1920s by self-professed debunkers like W.E. Woodward. These are the points the debunkers made:
- In his twenties and thirties Washington, a young man on the make, connived to buy up as much land as possible, sometimes unscrupulously. Early on in his career as a land speculator, when Virginia was still under British rule, he hired a surveyor to stake out land west of the Alleghenies that was off-limits to white settlers. As a colonel during the Seven Years’ War, to the disadvantage of his own soldiers, he made off with the best lands set aside by the British for soldiers who fought in the war.
- He didn’t like his mother and in her final years rarely visited her.
- Though he had a reputation as a prude thanks to mythmakers like Parson Weems, the author who concocted the famous cherry tree story, Washington actually love to drink and dance.
- As a soldier he told crude sex jokes. How bad were they? You be the judge. Here’s one of his jokes about a certain colonel’s love affair, as I related once in a book. The man, Washington remarked, “like a prudent general,” should have “reviewed his strength, his arms, and ammunition before he got involved in an action.” In the future, Washington advised, this colonel should “make the first onset upon his fair del Toboso, with vigor, that the impression may be deep, if it cannot be lasting.” That’s about it.
- He openly showed affection for his best friend’s wife, Sally Fairfax.
- He owned slaves and during one period spent a considerable time trying to arrange for the return of a slave who’d escaped. But in his will he freed his slaves on the death of his wife, Martha.
- As president he set the armed forces of the United States (such as they were back then) upon Native Americans in a grisly campaign marked by brutal violence.
It is not necessary for us to worship the founding fathers to acknowledge they are partially responsible for a country with a constitution with the potential to do right by all.
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