
"Lately I have been having issues with the term “Founders” or “Founding Fathers” because it’s pretty nebulous and undefined. There’s Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who signed the Declaration of Independence but had no involvement in the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison did a lot of the heavy lifting in drafting the Constitution but neither signed the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and worked for the Continental Congress but pretty soon became a
persona non grata thanks to his religious views. Patrick Henry gave the famous “Liberty or Death” speech but was also one of the most articulate voices
against adopting the Constitution. Which of these are “Founders”? All of them? None?
Even if we accept all of these men as “Founding Fathers” (which I think most would), to say that they disagreed on fundamental political principles is the height of understatement. And an attempt to put together the varying strains of conservative thought under the same “Founders” rubric is overly simplistic and misguided," -
Alex Knapp, Outside the Beltway.
I think the Founding Fathers would have agreed with this...