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Lies About the “Founding Fathers”

Exercises in propaganda

6 min readMar 25, 2025

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The Pantheon of “Founding Fathers”

History is a tricky subject, even trickier than science. What really happened in the past, and how and why, are matters of open debate regardless of the people or events. But history gets trickier the more past people and events are important to the interests of people today.

Who the “Founding Fathers” of the United States were and what they actually thought and did is of great importance to some people. There are good motives to be as realistic as possible in our understanding of these people who were architects of the new nation. Unfortunately, there are other motives to create a biased portrayal of these same people to serve other agendas.

History Is a History of History

Compare any two generations in US history and you will find two different versions of the country’s founding story. That shouldn’t surprise anyone because history is a relationship that the present has with the past. What happened in the past transpired in a particular way that could be said to be objectively true.

However, any and all objective facts must still be interpreted, especially as the “whys” behind any event. A good historian tries to piece together the facts and fairly interpret them in their context but with an eye to relating those facts to…

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Douglas Giles, PhD
Douglas Giles, PhD

Written by Douglas Giles, PhD

Philosopher by trade & temperament, professor for 21 years, bringing philosophy out of its ivory tower and into everyday life. https://dgilesauthor.com/

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