It is, of course, deeply ahistorical and borderline offensive to call the founding fathers of the American republic a bunch of "woke" liberals. Yes, I can hear the objections coming in from all directions, and we'll get to those — but let me explain.
It's all relative, and if the relative standard is the troglodyte ideology of Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and their various followers, hearkening back variously (and incoherently) to the Jim Crow era, the Confederacy and even medieval Europe, then the comparison is easy. With ideas gleaned from reading Greek and Roman philosophers and from the Enlightenment that surrounded them, the men who founded the United States were, given their era and their backgrounds, as "woke" to the themes of justice and equality and universal human rights as could possibly have been expected of anyone.
Let's do a thought experiment, shall we? Compare and contrast the fertile, curious and open minds of our most renowned 18th-century founders — Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Ben Franklin, George Washington — names so often invoked by Republicans in tones of stultified reverence but with no actual comprehension, with present-day Republicans. Imagine a deep-thinking, competent statesman like James Madison (whether or not you agree with his opinions!) confronting, let's say, Kevin McCarthy. Consider Madison and Hamilton composing their Federalist Papers and struggling to parse the difficult, often painful compromises needed to get ratification of the new Constitution from slave-owning states. Then consider McCarthy remarking, after the political infighting and 15 ballots needed for him to gain the House speakership — with his colleagues inexplicably chanting "USA! USA!" in frat-boy style when the excruciating embarrassment finally concluded — that Republicans of 2023 had, in the process, somehow "learned how to govern."
