e64. Mythologizing the Founders

If you live in the United States of America, then this week is Independence Day, the day when we patriotically celebrate the greatest of our heritage and the foresight of a bunch of men in breeches, wigs and stockings decided to create a perfect nation… or so we tell ourselves. If you live outside the United States… well, if you care about the holiday at all, it’s just a day when Americans are even more insufferable than normal. Honestly in 2019, a lot of people (certainly a lot of our listeners) probably realize that the founders of America were not necessarily the valiant heroes that we write about in childhood history books. However, for some reason we tend to celebrate them anyway, both officially with holidays like this, but also just in our day to day life, and even our legal system. We base actual Supreme Court decisions around “is this what the founders would have wanted?” Why do we do that? Why do we care about the opinions of a bunch of rich, elitist, racist, sexist men who have been dead for 200 years? Katya, Hannah and Mav are joined by returning guest, Charlie Bell to figure this out. Join us as we talk about everything from historic reenactment to the musical Hamilton and how the mythologizing of the the American founders continues to shape out culture today, and then let us know your thoughts. Citations and Links: * This episode’s Call for Comments* Art of Manliness, Ben Franklin’s Virtues Journal* Sex and the Founding Fathers by Thomas A. Foster* Hamilton Soundtrack* The New Adventures of Abraham Lincoln and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud* Franklin’s Fortune board game* Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson* “150-Year-Old Japanese Book Shows U.S. History as an Epic Mythology” by Ryan General * Thank you to Maximilian’s thoughtForm Music for our theme* See Charlie Bell in Comedy of Errors with