Whether the issue is taxation or abortion, you're bound to get a lecture from right-wing pundits on "what the Founding Fathers would do." The implication is that they and they alone are qualified to interpret the thoughts and intentions of a group of indoor plumbing-challenged aristocrats from two hundred years ago. That such a notion is steeped in arrogance goes without saying. Then again, these are the same people who generally presume to know God's mind.

Typically, once they've claimed the Fathers (and every Iraq War hero that never criticized Bush), right-wing pundits will tell you that the Founding Fathers were essentially of one mind, united in their enlightened pursuit of truth and liberty while adamantly opposed to anything that even remotely smelled like a liberal idea. Someone should tell Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh that just because they share the same brain, that doesn't mean every other group of people does, too.

Indeed, the Founding Fathers disagreed with each other about as much as they disagreed with King George. Sarah Palin inadvertently let the cat out of the bag a few weeks ago in response to the Tucson massacre, when she referenced Founding politicians who "settled their differences with dueling pistols." Now, the Alexander Hamilton/Aaron Burr affair was an anomaly, but it is true that the Fathers were insanely competitive, and often as contemptuous of each other's ideas as Rush and Keith are today. They routinely attacked each through lengthy editorial screeds, using ancient Greek statesmen such as Cicero and Cato as aliases (similar to the fights you see in the modern blogosphere between "Liberal Reader" and "Republican Bad Ass.")

Perhaps the main reason right-wing pundits don't want to acknowledge these conflicts is because they'd then have to admit that some of the Founders were (gasp) left-leaning. You don’t hear much about Alexander Hamilton outside of the dramatic way in which he died. He was never President, but he wrote two-thirds of the Federalist Papers, a primary source for interpreting the Constitution (Fox News's Roger Ailes is reportedly a big fan of the documents). He also was a very loud proponent of a strong, centralized federal government. (Imagine the rage from Fox News and the Tea Party if President Obama uttered such phrase today, however innocuously). Hamilton was also instrumental in creating the U.S. Mint, the Coast Guard and, most significantly, a standing federal army. His most vocal opponents, the ringleader of whom was Thomas Jefferson (a confessed agnostic, by the way), favored only state militias.

Imagine what the U.S. would look like today if the Jeffersonian view had prevailed. No U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines. Wouldn't you just love to see the look on the GOP's collective face if you told them they had maintain their global hegemony with the Georgia National Guard?

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