America's Real "Founding Principles" Your Teacher Hid From You
The liberals accusing you of betraying our Founding principles would be horrified to learn what those principles actually were.
Both liberals and moderate conservatives love to appeal to America’s “founding values,” whenever faced with an opinion more than the allowable one inch right of center.
If you criticize unlimited mass-democracy, argue that some moral standards should be enforced, or even claim that (shudder) America is a nation and not an idea, then you’ll quickly discover what I mean.
You’ll quickly be showered in platitudes about “We the People,” and the Constitution, and rights and freedom and Thomas Jefferson. You’ll be politely informed that your views are un-American and betray the values our country was founded on.
And the worst part of it all is that people like this aren’t even being disingenuous. They genuinely believe that George Washington’s political views were similar, if not identical, to those of Martin Luther King, Junior. They genuinely think John Adams and John Cornyn’s political philosophies are the same.
Because in the public school system, you’re fed one of two American creation myths.
You might be told that the Founding Fathers were evil supervillains who founded America on slavery and genocide. This is now the preferred narrative of the Left.
Or you might get the other comic book version of history, where the Founding Fathers were starry-eyed egalitarian romantics on some ideological crusade to create a utopia of equality. This is the patriotic myth that most people above 30 were taught.
The first myth will make you a cultural Marxist, and the second myth will make you an annoying “moderate conservative” (by our very, very low standards of what qualifies as a conservative in 2026) who likes to police right-wing thought.
Most Americans above a certain age were taught the second myth.
They emerged from the public school system convinced the Founders started our country as some “experiment in democracy” dedicated to equality, popular government, good vibes, and rock and roll.
Just like that one tall skinny guy with the beard and the top hat said that one time in that one speech their teachers made them memorize a few sentences from.
Not only are both these myths false; they’re laughably false. Ironically, the very “founding values” liberals like to accuse right-wingers of betraying are far closer to the ideas of whoever they’re criticizing than their own.
The United States wasn’t founded as a secular, liberal democracy. Instead, it was founded as a federation of openly and explicitly Christian states, many with established, taxpayer-funded churches.
That meant that, whether you agreed with its theology or not, a portion of your taxes was spent on whatever denomination your state government chose – be it Anglicanism or Congregationalism.
If a state government did so much as declare itself officially Christian, liberals would have a thermonuclear meltdown. This was a step beyond that, where the state governments were encoding a specific denomination with a theology even many Christians fiercely disagreed with into law.
So much for “separation of church and state.”
But it went far beyond that. Most states had religious qualifications for anyone who wanted to hold office. Newly elected statesmen were required to swear an oath professing their faith in the Christian religion. Here, for example, is the oath the State of Delaware required:
I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”
On top of that, the states had laws forcing Christian Sunday observance. Businesses were required to close down, work, travel, and other activities were restricted, and in some cases it was even illegal to refuse to attend church services.
Most shockingly of all to modern sensibilities, the American states enforced anti-blasphemy laws. It was illegal to revile Christianity or attack Christ, on pain of harsh fines or even imprisonment.
In short, the Founding generation wasn’t at all shy about strictly enforcing Christian morality and standards at the state level, up to and including imprisoning heretics for public speech.
And this isn’t even getting to the quasi-aristocratic society America was, the extremely strict voting restrictions, the Founders’ ethnic, religious, and cultural conception of American identity, explicit in the Federalist papers, and a million other things we don’t have time to discuss.
You can agree or disagree with any of this, but this is what the Founders actually believed in. These are the real “Founding values” of America. This is how government was actually run in the Early Republic.
By any modern liberal standards, the Founding Fathers didn’t remotely create an egalitarian, democratic, secular government, but a “far-right,” and “theocratic” society. The Founding Fathers in short, apparently betrayed the ideals of the Founding Fathers.
By the very standards of the people claiming right-wingers are betraying the Founding values, the Founding values are far-right, authoritarian, and evil.
So the next time a liberal claims you’re violating our Founding principles, remember what those Founding principles actually were.