Movement Builds to Change the Name of James Madison Memorial High School

Liberals are thrilled now that Civil War-era monuments commemorating Confederate generals have been removed. Street names have been changed and the Confederate Battle Flag is banned.

Now, liberals have their sights set on their next target… The Founding Fathers.

Started by a student at James Madison Memorial High School in Verona, Wisconsin, a petition to change the school’s name has gone viral!

Why? Because Madison, America’s 4th President, owned slaves. As the petition states, the student doesn’t feel safe in a school named after Madison: “James Madison, the 4th president of the United States was an owner of over 100 black slaves. The significance of this name in association with my school has a negative effect on memorials black students. The lack of representation I feel in this school makes me feel more than unsafe. I do not feel supported by the majority of staff at memorial, especially considering the fact that I’ve gotten called n word multiple times, along with having an individual threaten me by telling me they would lynch me.”

The petition now has more than 1500 signatures. As Jay Coast in The Weekly Standard notes, this anti-Founding Fathers movement has gone too far:

We owe them a debt of gratitude for their endeavors, notwithstanding the misdeeds they committed. If I contract somebody to paint my house, and I find out later that he is an adulterer, does that excuse me from paying what I owe? Of course not. By the same token, my debt for the painting does not oblige me to act as though he did not wrong his spouse. So it goes with the Founders who owned slaves: We should appreciate them for their endeavors, for our lives are manifestly better because of their struggles, but honoring them does not require us to ignore or excuse their errors. Madison’s home Montpelier, for example, just opened an exhibition, “The Mere Distinction of Colour,” exploring slavery at the plantation.

And…

Wiping the Founders from the public memory, moreover, endangers the perpetuation of our republic. They were no doubt flawed men, but they were flawed men who invented this system of government. If we wish to make the most of our government, we have to understand how it functions. That requires us to understand what these men thought and did. The decisions they made, and the assumptions behind them, reverberate through the generations, into the present day. Public memorials are a way to keep us mindful of their continued influence, so that as we endeavor to understand civil society, we remember to look to them.

There’s no doubt America’s Founding Fathers were complex, imperfect men. But the society they built would set into motion an extraordinary new country that would protect liberty and fight a bloody war to free slaves. The Constitution itself is a revolutionary act, and an accomplishment never-before-seen in world history.

History is messy. But that doesn’t mean liberals can be allowed to re-write history and turn America’s Founding Fathers into evil men or paint the entire country as racist. Liberals should be ashamed.

What do you think about changing the name of James Madison Memorial High School? Please leave us a comment (below) and tell us.

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