One of Trump's last acts as President was releasing the report of his 1776 Commission, members of which included no professional historians but did include right-wing conservative activists and "thinkers."
It's no surprise therefore that just as Trump legitimized his fake news, his alternative facts, by calling the authentic mainstream news fake news, this report lambasts liberals and progressives for hijacking the founding documents and the intentions of the founders and indoctrinating the youth of this country with liberalism and instead calls its highly conservative version of our founding as being the real facts. It even disputes the impact of slavery on the founders and our history and criticizes the Civil Rights movement as not being true to the founders' intentions.
When I read a summary of some of the reports main "findings" I thought it sounded suspiciously like the writing of Matthew Spalding in his We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles. And so I Googled whether he was on the commission. He was in fact the Executive Director.
This right-wing take on our founding documents and the founders is a travesty of historical research and interpretation. When Spalding's book was published in 2009, I was aghast because it had the same title as my 2004 book, We Still Hold These Truths: An American Manifesto.
When I edited the Wikipedia entry for "We Still Hold These Truths" to include information about my book - it just had included Spalding's book - here is what I said:
"Hirsch has a very different reading of those principles found in our founding documents. This is not as surprising as it may appear, for as Hirsch says in his book, 'in [the Declaration’s] interpretation lies the core of both the Liberal and Conservative ideologies that have run through American political life and the tension between them.'"
"Hirsch looks at the words of the Declaration and finds an all-embracing, profoundly Liberal, statement of the equality of all people and that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that, as stated in the Declaration, the role of government is to secure these rights. Hirsch then goes on to use the Declaration of Independence as a touchstone to examine nine key areas of government policy."
"Ironically, just as Spalding feels that Progressives eroded the founding principles, Hirsch believes that, “our nation stands at a crossroad. There is a radical Republican movement afoot to fundamentally alter the balance that our system has struck between private rights, the public good, and government. The issue is not simply big versus small government, high versus low taxes. At risk is the heart of our democracy, our historic values.”
"Hirsch states that current Republicans focus solely on rights of the individual, quite divorced from their responsibilities as citizens and from the rights of others and the common good. Since the Declaration states that all men are created equal and all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the system can only work if one says that each person has this liberty so long as it does not harm others or impinge on the rights of others. This last proposition is in fact the basis for all government laws and regulation, whether of individuals or corporations. "
President Biden almost immediately disbanded the 1776 Commission, but its report will probably not just gather dust, as most reports do, because the far right loves to be able to justify their beliefs and actions based on the Constitution. They love the legitimacy it confers.
Whereas for some perverse reason, liberals and progressives do that seek to actively use our founding documents to support their cause. Perhaps they feel it's so obvious; but to much of the country obviously that is not the case. Whenever I've sent my book to top Democratic politicians, I've only gotten an acknowledgment at best, despite a pre-publication endorsement from James Fallows, the well-respected national correspondent for The Atlantic. Liberals do not flock to my book for support like the far right flocks to Spalding's book.
