Whenever the lists of America’s greatest Presidents are being compiled, always, and no doubt, deservedly, counting Lincoln among the top two, with occasionally very generous inclusions of more recent Presidents among the top numbers, I always start arguing to myself that, no matter how great these later arrivals may have been, the greatness of the first American Presidents, the Founding Fathers of the nation, must not be diminished. After all, it is always so much harder to create a masterpiece than to maintain it through good stewardship. No offense to Lincoln and FDR, or to one of my favorites, Teddy Roosevelt, all of them had inherited a marvelous piece of machinery, and all they had to do was to perform some fine tuning on it, to meet the challenges (granted, daunting) of their troublesome times.
It is, therefore, of paramount importance to never forget to pay tribute to the exceptional group of men, The Founding Presidents, as I have called them, lest in the rush to add more and more new names to the upper part of the list, some of these hallowed old names start falling through the cracks, edited for limited space, and their enormous parental role in giving birth to this nation begins to fade against the shiny limelight of her more recent caretakers.
The fading of this kind has already occurred. How many, among the college-educated Americans of our day can name the sequence of the American Presidents from number one to, say, number… six? How many, can even recognize their names in proper attribution?
And yet, these names have been part of this nation’s gold reserve, and have immensely contributed to the aura of greatness, which had surrounded the history of America, even in less charitable circumstances, up until the neo-framers of the New American Century would finally squander that gold reserve, and the good will of the world, going hand-in-hand with it.
So, here is my own tribute to the greatness of the pathfinders and creators, The Founding Presidents.---
It is, therefore, of paramount importance to never forget to pay tribute to the exceptional group of men, The Founding Presidents, as I have called them, lest in the rush to add more and more new names to the upper part of the list, some of these hallowed old names start falling through the cracks, edited for limited space, and their enormous parental role in giving birth to this nation begins to fade against the shiny limelight of her more recent caretakers.
The fading of this kind has already occurred. How many, among the college-educated Americans of our day can name the sequence of the American Presidents from number one to, say, number… six? How many, can even recognize their names in proper attribution?
And yet, these names have been part of this nation’s gold reserve, and have immensely contributed to the aura of greatness, which had surrounded the history of America, even in less charitable circumstances, up until the neo-framers of the New American Century would finally squander that gold reserve, and the good will of the world, going hand-in-hand with it.
So, here is my own tribute to the greatness of the pathfinders and creators, The Founding Presidents.---
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