Michael Bennet: “like you, I have heard a lot of loose talk over the past months invoking the Founding Fathers--loose talk to underscore…”

“like you, I have heard a lot of loose talk over the past months invoking the Founding Fathers--loose talk to underscore an expedient argument about what they would be doing if they were legislating today. But the way our Founders are often used is as a caricature to distort history for the benefit of partisan and narrow interests. To hear some people talk about it, you would think the Founders were engaged in a process of dismantling a country rather than building one. That version of events is not only wrong but it also thoroughly diminishes the founding generation's extraordinary accomplishments and the lessons we should draw from them. Our Founders met enormous challenges with great courage and sacrifice to start a country around an ideal. In the same vein, our modern history has been characterized by meeting great challenges with distinct qualities. We are hard working. We meet our challenges by refusing to allow their complexities or attendant political difficulty to lead us toward accepting failure as an option. We are inclusive. We meet our great challenges by meeting them as one, by crafting solutions that involve buy-in, participation, and sacrifice from all parts of the political landscape, and the American people. We act with courage.…”