History Through a Glass Darkly

The well informed and objective folks at World Net Daily (aka Whirled Nut Daily) have come up with this thought-provoking, ignorant, crap, bumper sticker:

At the time of the American Revolution, our founding fathers would not have even known what this meant. Right and left political labels were the product of the French Revolution a few years later and then those that were said to be on the right were the Royalists and on the left were the Revolutionaries. The counterparts in the American Revolution would have been the Tories, those loyal to the King, on the right and the founding fathers of the United States on the left. I suspect they would have resented being called extremists as well since their goal was to create a well-reasoned representative government without any of the irrational emotionalism associated with extremists.

This is one of those things that really gripes my cookies. Politicians and pundits are always projecting their own attitudes and opinions onto iconic historical figures and then declaring them as historical fact. If George Washington knew all nonsense that people have said he represented, he'd come back and kick their butts.

When I have encouraged people to study more history, they frequently ask what value all those boring facts have in their life. The answer is simple. If you know the real historical facts, then you know when devious politicians and wind-bag pundits are trying to manipulate you into believing absurdities.