A Fox News poll conducted July 12-15 surveyed Americans’ views on our nation’s Founders. The result showed that while a majority of those polled still viewed our Founding Fathers favorably, the approval margin was not nearly as universal as it might have been a generation or two ago. Only 63 percent regarded our Founders as heroes, while 15 percent said they were villains. Another 15 percent said “it depends” and seven percent had no opinion.
There were major differences among those polled, according to their political affiliation, race, religious persuasion, age, or place of residence.
Survey participants most likely to call our Founders “heroes” included Republican women (82 percent), Republicans (79 percent), White evangelical Christians (77 percent), self-identified very conservatives (77 percent) and White suburban voters (72 percent).
At the opposite end of the spectrum, those most inclined to consider our Founders as “villains” included Black voters (39 percent), self-identified very liberals (37 percent), non-White women (35 percent), women under age 45 (29 percent), and millennials (24 percent). Even among these demographic groups, however, these were obviously minority opinions.
When asked if they thought monuments and statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson should stay up rather than be taken down, those who said the monuments should remain prevailed by a 57-point margin — 73 percent to 16 percent.
During an interview with Fox & Friends on July 20, political commentator and author Ben Shapiro stated that the fact that “only 63 percent of Americans describe the founders as heroes is devastating, that means that 37 percent of Americans do not describe the founders as heroes, they describe them as either villains or I don’t know.”
Shapiro said, “If you look at the racial cross-tabs it’s really devastating.”
“If you look at the Black community in the United States, according to this poll, a plurality [39-31 percent] of Black Americans believes that founders were villains rather than heroes, which is devastating to the future of the country,” Shapiro observed.
“If you believe that the country was innately founded on sin and evil, it’s going to be very difficult to reach the sort of national unity that we require in order to move forward and I think that is something the radical Left has been promulgating,” he continued.
Shapiro also commented on his new book, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps.
“My book is really about how if a nation is to move forward it has to have a common philosophy, which is the Declaration of Independence, it has to have a common culture, a culture of tolerance, but also a culture of defense of rights and culture of entrepreneurship and the country has to have a common history,” he said.
“We have to share history and believe that we are all part of the same great stream of American history, trying to justify those founding principles, falling short, but eventually succeeding.”
“If we don’t believe in those things, the country falls apart,” Shapiro noted.
Image: Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull
Warren Mass has served The New American since its launch in 1985 in several capacities, including marketing, editing, and writing. Since retiring from the staff several years ago, he has been a regular contributor to the magazine. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at [email protected].
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