Underachievers Of 1776?

Obama Speaks - What a Brutalist

Manhattan Musings

By Stephen MacDonald

With the American Left increasingly alienated from all things American, I suppose that we should be grateful when progressive thought leaders even deign to mention the Declaration of Independence as we approach that document’s 250th anniversary.

Take former President Barack Obama. This past weekend Obama celebrated the grand opening of his smiley face mausoleum,the Obama Presidential Center, in Chicago:

Obama’s brow was masterfully furrowed as he rendered his verdict on the Founding Fathers: “The founders fell terribly short of the Declaration’s promise.” Barack Obama also, without a direct quote, referred to “a declaration that we are all created equal“—carefully avoiding the Founding Fathers’ problematic, and potentially toxic, phrase “all men are created equal”.

So should artist John Trumbull’s iconic depiction of the signing of the Declaration of Independence be renamed The Underachievers?

How interesting for Obama to raise the topic of falling short! A fundamental premise of the Declaration of Independence was that “the good people of these states” should, by their “inalienable Rights”, have a government that is numbered among those “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”. Unfortunately, Obama—when actually wielding power from the White House—attempted to blitzkrieg far past the founding document’s “just powers.” Towering over other unjust actions was Obama’s effort to destroy his party’s opposition in 2016 via Crossfire Hurricane and the promotion of Hillary Clinton’s Russia hoax.

Simply put, Obama tried to thwart the ability of the “good people” of America to choose Obama’s successor and when that failed, Obama did everything possible to cripple the launch of the new Trump administration in 2017.

In one sense Obama could lay claim to his being an expert of sorts in falling terribly short of the Declaration’s promise. But he is hardly in a position to give us lofty laments on the failings of the Founding Fathers.

By contrasting the Founding Fathers with thought pioneers of the Left such as Barack Obama, recent revelations from the UK bolster the case that those 18th century patriots performed brilliantly on the Declaration’s foundational premise. This premise was that the United States “are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved”.

Two hundred and fifty years on, the wisdom of their putting their lives on the line to accomplish this separation of nations has been continuously demonstrated. Although there have always been times and places in America where we fall short of the idea of equal justice under the law, nothing in contemporary America compares to the emerging picture of injustice in Britain.

The just-issued “Rape Gang Inquiry Report” by UK Member of Parliament Rupert Lowe demonstrates that throughout England, the police, social workers and numerous other arms of the UK government have cooperated with anti-white, predominantly Pakistani rape gangs targeting vulnerable English girls. The Report states that a minimum of 250,000 girls were gang rape victims, with British authorities looking the other way, or worse.

We in America should be thankful to the Founding Fathers and, to employ the Declaration’s term, thankful to “Nature’s God”, that the horrors engulfing our “mother country”—and that are now widespread in much of Europe—may still be prevented here.

Perhaps someone should tell former President Obama.

Turning to another thought leader of the Left, Walter Isaacson has spent many years running Time magazine, CNN and the Aspen Institute as well as writing bestselling books—with millions of copies sold. He reached a high point in 2023, when then-occupant of the White House, Joe Biden, awarded Isaacson the National Humanities Medal. In his newest book, “The Greatest Sentence Ever Written,” Isaacson aims for a nuanced view of the people he calls “the founders”.

(For these thought leaders, Oldspeak/wrongthink about “Fathers” is out. And compliments to the Founding Fathers, when permissible at all, can only be given on the backhand.)

Walter Isaacson’s “Greatest Sentence Ever Written” is this one:

Per Walter lsaacson, the “Founders” used “the rhetorical flourish of ‘all men’ when they wrote that ‘all men are created equal.’” But, “they consciously and intentionally did not mean in most instances to include women, slaves, Native Americans, and in some cases even non-property owners.”

I acknowledge that, like me and every person I have ever met, the Founding Fathers were imperfect men. But if we are to go out in search of a “more perfect” path to the principles of the Declaration, a former president whose towering achievement was the nearly-successful Crossfire Hurricaning of American democracy is not to be our guide. And in light of the Muslim invasion unfolding in Europe, the focus of the final passages of his “Greatest Sentence” also leaves me leery of Walter Isaacson’s judgment.

Isaacson “consciously and intentionally” chooses to end “Greatest Sentence” with what, at the time it was made in the late 18th century, would have been a cheeky remark by Founding Father Benjamin Franklin. Isaacson decided to conclude his book by noting that Franklin “helped lead the funding for a new hall that would provide a pulpit to visiting preachers of any belief ‘so that even if the Mufti of Constantinople were to send a missionary to preach Mohammedanism to us, he would find a pulpit at his service.’” It is fine for Walter Isaacson to pay lip service to freedom of speech and religion, although—under his watch—Time magazine, CNN and the Aspen Institute were great friends to freedom of speech, but only so long as there was nearly-total conformity to Democratic Party talking points.

But…glorying in a future of missionaries from the “Mufti of Constantinople”—for a reader in a Western country taking in these words in 2026–can leave one on a sour note. We are living in a time when the UK and much of Europe appear well on their way to suffering the same fate, as the now-vanished Constantinople. Thanks to millions of such missionaries.

For the 250th anniversary of America, let us all put aside the would-be thought leaders of the Left and their backhanded “compliments” to the Founding Fathers. We should give thanks to God and to all whose sacrifices have given us the ability to pursue the happiness of the upcoming Independence Day! And we pray that God may continue to Bless America!