Get Real America

I recently watched a program on TV, “Secrets of the Founding Fathers”, or what I could stomach of it. It was obviously, for whatever reason, an infantile attempt to discredit them in the eyes of Americans. The conclusion one of the so-called experts came too was that the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution while intoxicated and smoking hemp. That they were all influenced by the devious Freemasons, and that they were secretive about their decisions, keeping them from the populous.
First of all, I do not believe they were perfect people. They were human, and never, in any stretch of the imagination, did they propose to present themselves as perfect. In fact, if you read statements from Washington, he cringed at the idea that he would be set up as a demi-god. Did they drink? Of course. It was safer to drink whiskey and beer than water. Did they propose a break with England for financial motives? Of course. The whole taxation issue was at the heart of the Revolution, not only in the eyes of the professional, wealthier class, but the everyday man.
One of the main focuses of the program was the growing of hemp. Apparently, someone stumbled upon this fact, and decided that the Founding Fathers were all potheads. Hemp was widely used in the colonies for sail making, paper making, rope making and fiber for clothing. In fact, it was one of the largest crops grown in the colonies. The argument against Washington was that in one of his letters, he lamented the fact that he wasn’t home in time to separate the male and female plants. The comment was that this proved that Washington smoked it since the female plant apparently is used for this purpose. In all actuality, according to botanists, there are two types of hemp plant, one that has both male and female characteristics and the others that are male and female. They claim that a good and experienced grower tries to separate these to increase the yield. In fact, smoking the form of hemp that they grew would, it is claimed, give anyone a massive headache that would increasingly get worse.
It is highly unlikely that, in a country that grew tobacco, they would have considered hemp as a possible smoke, but, even if they did, we need to remember that up until the middle of the last century, heroin, cocaine and opium were often used as magic miracle cures. Some were used in elixirs and even soft drinks.
In the same “documentary”, Washington was both labeled a possible homosexual and a “womanizer”, which would have been quite a feat even for him. It was hinted that he had a relationship with La Fayette. He did. If you read their letters to each other, you can see that Washington, after some qualms about this Frenchman in the New World, eventually thought of him as a son. And, La Fayette, thought so much of Washington that he named his son after him. When they used words like embrace and love in their letters, you must remember that people in the eighteenth century (men and women) often hugged one another when they met. And they used the word “embrace”, not in a sexual sense, but in a warm and loving term. It was a different era. Letters were long, mushy and gushy, because it was the manner of the time- a social must. Much like when we were in elementary school, unworldly, innocent and holding hands with your friends on the playground. No one thought anything of it.
Washington often lamented the fact that he was going to die without an heir, and he thought of La Fayette as the son he never had.
As far as his womanizing , who knows. There is no real evidence of it, but it was well known that even when Washington was a young teenager, he always had an eye for the ladies. This trait continued until his old age.
One of the other suspicions about the Founding Fathers was their creation of the Constitution behind locked doors, and, their disagreements and arguments. You get any group of men or women together to organize or create, or legislate, and there’s going to be conflict. The locked doors were an effort to get things done, with only the delegates input, and not added influences from outside. Remember, this was a time when the Revolution was recent, Tories, British sympathizers abounded, and not everyone was convinced that the country was a viable idea. Also, it was important to them that no 18th century lobbyist influenced their representatives with their own agendas. Something that we have not learned to avoid in this day and age apparently.
The Freemason factor. Yes, some of them were. Bottom line, if they brought anything to the Constitution from the factors included in Freemasonry, it was items like “checks and balances”, hardly detrimental. They drew on what they were familiar with. Don’t we want checks and balances? Or, anyway, some of us do.
Yes, it is interesting to find out everything we can about those who set the wheels in motion to bring this country into being. But, there is also a move to change historical facts and bend them to further individual causes. This accomplishes nothing but demoralizing people who, do not expect perfection in our ancestral leaders, but honor their sacrifice.
The remarkable facts about these men is not their faults, which they would readily admit too if they were here, but their courage and sacrifice. These were, for the most part, men, well established in a British colony under British law. They had the most to lose from their actions, including their lives.
There is a shameful and ridiculous trend to rewrite history, omit certain aspects of history and distort facts, even in the text books today. The frightening thing is that there are some who will believe it.
The creators of this “program” were obviously trying to discredit the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, and virtually the entire birth of our country. The same country that allows these people the opportunity to flourish, prosper, and deride anything they choose, all in the guise of intellectual freedom. These people should know that in many countries around the world their lives would be much different, but thanks to the old ladies and gentlemen of our past that they ridicule, they are free to invent their own versions of reality to their heart’s content.