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Founding father James Madison sidelined by woke history in his own home

Aww. I'm so sorry your experience was so much easier. Maybe you need to go to the Noah's Ark museum in Kentucky to see how the dinosaurs frolicked with lilly white cave people in the years just after the earth was created 6,000 years ago? Because the bible tells me so...

Who's hostile? People like Washington and Jefferson and Madison who owned slaves and organized genocides.

Maybe you like your Aunt Jemima syrupy sick whitewashed "history" better? Easier that way. White people are so eager to forget and wash their hands of actual history, actual facts.

You have the mental outlook of a 5 year old child. Human beings and history is often complicated. You cannot always look at people thru a modern day lens, that is the act of a fool.
 
You have the mental outlook of a 5 year old child. Human beings and history is often complicated. You cannot always look at people thru a modern day lens, that is the act of a fool.
Sounds like you're saying it's okay if they did it in the past because it was cool back then. Am I mistaken?
 
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By Mary Kay Linge and Jon Levine

The globalist billionaire who funded the woke transformation of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello paid for a similar overhaul of James Madison’s house — where the author of the US Constitution has been shoved into a supporting role, while slavery and racism take center stage.

No American flags fly at Montpelier, Madison’s plantation home in rural Virginia, and not a single display focuses on the life and accomplishments of America’s foremost political philosopher, who created our three-branch federal system of government, wrote the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, and served two terms as president.

Instead, blindsided tourists are hammered by high-tech exhibits about Madison’s slaves and current racial conflicts, thanks to a $10 million grant from left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein.

“I was kind of thinking we’d be hearing more about the Constitution,” one baffled dad said when The Post visited the president’s home this week. “But everything here is really about slavery.”

“It’s been inspirational … I guess,” shrugged John from Wisconsin after taking the $35 guided tour.

Reviewers on social media have been more harsh.

“They really miss the mark,” Greg Hancock of Mesa, Ariz. posted last week. “We left disappointed not having learned more about … the creation of the Constitution.”

“The worst part were the gross historical inaccuracies and constant bias exhibited by the tour guide,” complained AlexZ, who visited July 8.

Visitors to Montpelier get to see just three rooms in the sprawling mansion. The estate “made Madison the philosopher, farmer, statesman, and enslaver that he was,” the guide said as The Post’s group entered the home — a line she repeated at the end of her spiel.

Outdoors and in the house’s huge basement, dozens of interactive stations seek to draw a direct line between slavery, the Constitution, and the problems of African Americans today.

“A one hour Critical Race Theory experience disguised as a tour,” groused Mike Lapolla of Tulsa, Okla., after visiting last August.

Hurricane Katrina flooding, the Ferguson riots, incarceration, and more all trace back to slavery, according to a 10-minute multi-screen video.

Another exhibit damns every one of the nation’s first 18 presidents — even those, like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln, who never owned slaves — for having benefited from slavery in some way.

The only in-depth material about the Constitution itself appears in a display that pushes the claim, championed by the controversial 1619 Project, that racism was the driving force behind the entire American political system.

Even the children’s section of the gift shop leans far left, with titles like “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi and “She Persisted” by Chelsea Clinton.

Virginia Rep. Bob Good called the historical rewrite “a deliberate attack on those founding institutions.”

“The left is trying to revise our history and is perpetuating a dishonest narrative,” the Republican said.

But the progressive programming will likely accelerate in the wake of a board battle at the Montpelier Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the estate.

In May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the home, forced the board to accept a slate of left-wing activist members in the name of racial equity.

The new members aim to transform Montpelier into “a black history and black rights organization that could care less about James Madison and his legacy,” board member Mary Alexander, a documented descendant of Madison’s slave Paul Jennings, told the Orange County Review.

“There were hundreds of thousands of slave owners,” Alexander said. “But not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution.”

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who rose to power on parent outcry over critical race theory in public schools, refused to comment on Rubensteins donation — although the two were close allies at the Carlyle Group investment firm, where both made their fortunes.

“The governor believes we should teach all history, including the good and the bad, but firmly believes that we shouldn’t distort it,” said Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter.

“This is part of a larger movement to distort the legacy of the Founders and undermine the principles they put forth,” said Brenda Hafera of the Heritage Foundation’s Simon Center for American Studies.

“If you can undermine the Founders, you create the opportunity for those principles to be replaced by something else,” she said — “something like Critical Race Theory or identity politics.”


The article left out the newly built wing to explain the duponts tenure of ownership.

ps-I’m a regular at Montpelier which is well worth the visit, and the slavery section is very easily avoided. But here’s a pro tip - if you get that worked up about this sort of thing, just go ten miles down the road to barboursville vineyard - home of Madison’s and Jefferson’s friend James Barbour- and spend the day drinking octagon and Nebbiolo, and eating some damn fine food.
 
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Our family visited James Madison's mansion at Montpelier
in 2001. We paid $5 a person and our tour was self-guided.
We saw more than 3 rooms in the mansion and had an
extensive outside walk on the estate grounds itself. One
hostess was on duty and she answered some questions
we had about the various rooms. Glad we went there
before the hostile takeover.
The old old days were great - volunteer tour guides who were essentially local gentlemen farmers. And quirky stuff like the glass filled with mercury door knobs (so the DuPont servants didn’t have to polish them).
Visited again last year. The physical restoration is an improvement. The value is not. Btw, a paying customer should absolutely, always feel free to challenge a tour guide for different information.
 
It's the golden rule. Those who have the gold rewrite the rules, and history along with it.
 
By Mary Kay Linge and Jon Levine

The globalist billionaire who funded the woke transformation of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello paid for a similar overhaul of James Madison’s house — where the author of the US Constitution has been shoved into a supporting role, while slavery and racism take center stage.

No American flags fly at Montpelier, Madison’s plantation home in rural Virginia, and not a single display focuses on the life and accomplishments of America’s foremost political philosopher, who created our three-branch federal system of government, wrote the Bill of Rights and the Federalist Papers, and served two terms as president.

Instead, blindsided tourists are hammered by high-tech exhibits about Madison’s slaves and current racial conflicts, thanks to a $10 million grant from left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein.

“I was kind of thinking we’d be hearing more about the Constitution,” one baffled dad said when The Post visited the president’s home this week. “But everything here is really about slavery.”

“It’s been inspirational … I guess,” shrugged John from Wisconsin after taking the $35 guided tour.

Reviewers on social media have been more harsh.

“They really miss the mark,” Greg Hancock of Mesa, Ariz. posted last week. “We left disappointed not having learned more about … the creation of the Constitution.”

“The worst part were the gross historical inaccuracies and constant bias exhibited by the tour guide,” complained AlexZ, who visited July 8.

Visitors to Montpelier get to see just three rooms in the sprawling mansion. The estate “made Madison the philosopher, farmer, statesman, and enslaver that he was,” the guide said as The Post’s group entered the home — a line she repeated at the end of her spiel.

Outdoors and in the house’s huge basement, dozens of interactive stations seek to draw a direct line between slavery, the Constitution, and the problems of African Americans today.

“A one hour Critical Race Theory experience disguised as a tour,” groused Mike Lapolla of Tulsa, Okla., after visiting last August.

Hurricane Katrina flooding, the Ferguson riots, incarceration, and more all trace back to slavery, according to a 10-minute multi-screen video.

Another exhibit damns every one of the nation’s first 18 presidents — even those, like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln, who never owned slaves — for having benefited from slavery in some way.

The only in-depth material about the Constitution itself appears in a display that pushes the claim, championed by the controversial 1619 Project, that racism was the driving force behind the entire American political system.

Even the children’s section of the gift shop leans far left, with titles like “Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi and “She Persisted” by Chelsea Clinton.

Virginia Rep. Bob Good called the historical rewrite “a deliberate attack on those founding institutions.”

“The left is trying to revise our history and is perpetuating a dishonest narrative,” the Republican said.

But the progressive programming will likely accelerate in the wake of a board battle at the Montpelier Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the estate.

In May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which owns the home, forced the board to accept a slate of left-wing activist members in the name of racial equity.

The new members aim to transform Montpelier into “a black history and black rights organization that could care less about James Madison and his legacy,” board member Mary Alexander, a documented descendant of Madison’s slave Paul Jennings, told the Orange County Review.

“There were hundreds of thousands of slave owners,” Alexander said. “But not hundreds of thousands who wrote the Constitution.”

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who rose to power on parent outcry over critical race theory in public schools, refused to comment on Rubensteins donation — although the two were close allies at the Carlyle Group investment firm, where both made their fortunes.

“The governor believes we should teach all history, including the good and the bad, but firmly believes that we shouldn’t distort it,” said Youngkin spokesperson Macaulay Porter.

“This is part of a larger movement to distort the legacy of the Founders and undermine the principles they put forth,” said Brenda Hafera of the Heritage Foundation’s Simon Center for American Studies.

“If you can undermine the Founders, you create the opportunity for those principles to be replaced by something else,” she said — “something like Critical Race Theory or identity politics.”



Correctly pointing out that Jefferson was a slave owner, and slave raper is not "Woke History"


It is simply "History".
 
If I was visiting that historical attraction, and paying $35 for the privilege, then I would expect to learn about James Madison, not George Floyd.

I'd also expect to be able to see more than three rooms.

We were just in the neighborhood today while traveling home from a week at the beach and balked at the price of both Monticello and Montpelier.

Nothing to do with how it's curated, just that I'd been made aware of how limited access is compared to the focus put on the gift shop and other up-sells.
 
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I think everybody is missing on this one.

The implication, from the article, is that the "James Madison experience" has been modified in such a way that it's largely become about slavery and his role-therein. Not James Madison's unique contributions to US history.... which is what you might expect when you show up for the James Madison experience.

(unfortunately, his contributions to the maintenance of slavery and oppression in America probably weren't a very unique contribution)

@NorthernHawkeye, nor anybody else in this thread is saying we shouldn't have plantation tours or exhibits and information about slavery. Or, even, that we ought to ignore important US historical figures participation in oppression.

Where the argument on this one goes back to: what stories are most important to tell about historic US figure X? What should the balance of information look like? You can screw it up any number of ways.

Now all that said... maybe the article is misleading, maybe certain important context is being left out. I don't have time to research. So maybe the picture they're painting isn't too accurate. That could be, it could be a shit take.
I was looking at the website today, we were coincidentally considering stopping, and it looks like the enslaved persons tour is free with admission to the property. The other tours about Madison himself are an additional fee.
 
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You really don't seem to grasp the analogy here, do you?

Correctly portraying "history" is "history".
Whitewashing it is what you're in favor of, to hide the ugly warts behind the scenes.
That's not true at all. It's very simple and reasonable to acknowledge the horrificness of slavery and to point it out when relevant which it is in this case. What is unreasonable is to make that the only thing.
 
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Wow, the constitution has been argued about a lot lately. I wonder what the guy who wrote it thought at the time

Doesn't matter who wrote it, he was a slave owner

I'm just curious. Was he a lawyer or a banker or a librarian? What kind of education did he have?

Dude! He owned slaves.

I know but I was just wondering if he...

SLAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
Meh.

Trying to apply current moral standards to people in the past, is stupid and disingenuous. Any historian knows that.
 
Wow, the constitution has been argued about a lot lately. I wonder what the guy who wrote it thought at the time

Doesn't matter who wrote it, he was a slave owner

I'm just curious. Was he a lawyer or a banker or a librarian? What kind of education did he have?

Dude! He owned slaves.

I know but I was just wondering if he...

SLAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you're mad that the tour is focused on slaves and slavery maybe don't go to a former slave plantation.
 
Aww. I'm so sorry your experience was so much easier. Maybe you need to go to the Noah's Ark museum in Kentucky to see how the dinosaurs frolicked with lilly white cave people in the years just after the earth was created 6,000 years ago? Because the bible tells me so...

Who's hostile? People like Washington and Jefferson and Madison who owned slaves and organized genocides.

Maybe you like your Aunt Jemima syrupy sick whitewashed "history" better? Easier that way. White people are so eager to forget and wash their hands of actual history, actual facts.

Likely schtick but I still lol’d, especially at the first part.
 
Wow, the constitution has been argued about a lot lately. I wonder what the guy who wrote it thought at the time

Doesn't matter who wrote it, he was a slave owner

I'm just curious. Was he a lawyer or a banker or a librarian? What kind of education did he have?

Dude! He owned slaves.

I know but I was just wondering if he...

SLAVES!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, maybe we shouldn't hold the opinions of people who compromised to view human beings as subservient and 3/5 the value of other human beings as the end all be all.
 
If I was visiting that historical attraction, and paying $35 for the privilege, then I would expect to learn about James Madison, not George Floyd.

I'd also expect to be able to see more than three rooms.

Wow, could you be anymore racist. You don't even consider the black slaves as human enough to have their own story, they're just slaves to you. And worse, you've even lumped all black people (of today) into that same group. It doesn't matter to you if it was a slave from 200 years ago or a black guy on the corner today, they're just the same subhuman to you and you're not interested in anything about them. No wonder your kids turned out to be shit, just look at their parents.
 
They talked about slavery on a plantation tour.

You snowflakes have outdone yourselves.
I know you are a leftist so you're not real bright, but slavery wasn't the only thing happening in the 18th century. Maybe we should dwell on the barbaric practice of blood letting.
 
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I know you are a leftist so you're not real bright, but slavery wasn't the only thing happening in the 18th century. Maybe we should dwell on the barbaric practice of blood letting.
It was a plantation. The majority of the people who lived and died there were slaves.

James Madison knew the moral wrong of slavery. He wrote about it at length.
 
Yeah, maybe we shouldn't hold the opinions of people who compromised to view human beings as subservient and 3/5 the value of other human beings as the end all be all.
Its not. Why is it one or the other? You can't learn both?
 
It was a plantation. The majority of the people who lived and died there were slaves.

James Madison knew the moral wrong of slavery. He wrote about it at length.

The Freguson riots have a connection to slavery? Come on mnole, do you really believe that?

A dirt bag strong-arm robber attacked a cop. Then a false narrative was created, fanned and fueled by leftists at the highest levels. The result was riots and a city being ravaged.

What the f*%k does James Madison have to do with that?
 
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Meh.

Trying to apply current moral standards to people in the past, is stupid and disingenuous. Any historian knows that.
Meh.

A majority of people knew slavery was abhorrent back then.... that's why the northern states (where most of the people were) got together and outlawed it by 1804. They ended up having to fight a big war over it because the South was committed to something only supported by a minority of Americans.

Not much has changed as far as that is concerned, the confederates of today seem to want another go at it
 
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