I recently heard Glenn Beck praising the recent uptick in popular interest in the political thought of America's founding generation of statesmen, marking one of the few times I agreed with him. Increased interest in understanding the ideas, motivations, and arguments of the men who designed our constitutional system is a very good thing, though I'm not sure it will work out very well for the Glenn Beck's of the world.Anyone who takes a serious interest in the writings of America's revolutionaries will quickly realize that like all serious intellectuals these men we revere as virtual philosopher statesmen were much more complex and nuanced in their views than our school boy mythology reveals.
When protesters hold up famous quotes from Paine, Jefferson, Madison, etc, They are almost always taking the words of these men out of context. Indeed, one of the truly revolutionary ideas championed by these men was the rejection of government and politics as an arena for the contestation of "universal truths." Their belief that such matters were too important for politics represents their "revolutionary" rejection of the classical marriage of virtue and citizenship, as well as their intellectual sensitivity to context.
Preeminent historian John Patrick Diggins explained that Thomas Jefferson linked virtue to "authenticity," not religion or even good citizenship. This insight into Jefferson's thought makes the author of the Declaration more like America's X and Y generations than the folks in the pews, the political parties, or the Fox News audience.
I'm not arguing that the Founding Fathers were left wingers, but merely that serious scrutiny is the enemy of jingoism and politically-motivated spin. If Americans really are starting to examine the writings of our Founding Fathers, then demagogues on all sides will lose credibility (and maybe even ratings) because though they were hard-headed politicians, the founders were also intellectuals at a time before the divorce of power and intellectualism in America.
Whenever demagogic pundits or politicians enlist the Framers in their harangues, I'm always reminded of the reality that it was actually just such anti-intellectualism that most offended the men who shaped our Republic.