Don't Tread on Their Myths

With Thanksgiving reminding us of our colonial past, this is a good time to debunk one of the silliest of the countless silly myths in the pantheon of right-wing delusions. Conservatives, waving their Gadsden flags and wearing tricornes, like to fancy themselves as kindred spirits of America's revolutionaries, with appellations like "Patriots," "Minutemen" and "tea partiers."

The reason it's so bizarre is had these folks been around during the Revolution there's a pretty fair chance most of them would have been on the other side, loyal to King George.

Historians estimate 40 to 45 percent of the population actively supported the war and about a third of the colonists remained on the sidelines. Another 20 percent, or 500,000, were known as Loyalists, Tories or Royalists. Want to guess what their profile and attitudes looked like?

In his seminal book, Conservatism in Early American History, historian Leonard Woods Larabee identified eight characteristics of the Loyalists. Most tended to be older and better off than the general population. They resisted innovation and were pessimistic about change. They were overly cautious and called for more time to consider the Patriots' proposals.

Also, Loyalists were more sentimentally attached to their (British) past and more authoritarian in their outlook. Most were merchants, landed gentry or mercantilists holding lucrative commercial ties they considered imperiled by the Patriots' provocations -- like the real Tea Party -- and proclamations of democratic liberties.

Notice any similarities with today's conservatives? Instead of cons lauding radicals like Hancock, Sam Adams and Franklin, they'd actually feel more at home with the Penns, Lloyds and Randolphs, Royalists and the leading conservatives of their day.

To be sure, there were pockets of loyalist support among back country frontiersmen, tenant farmers, German immigrants and Indians. But the leadership and financial backing for the loyalist cause came from the affluent and better connected, many of whom fled to Canada, the Bahamas and England as the tide turned against them.

So while thousands of well-heeled, anglophile Tories fled the emerging nation, historians report as many as 60 percent of the recruits at Valley Forge were convicts, freed slaves, indentured servants and impoverished immigrants. Crispus Attucks was the first rebel shot in the Boston Massacre. He was black and a runaway slave. General Friedrich von Steuben, an inspirational Prussian army officer, molded Washington's troops into an effective fighting force. Historians suspect he was gay.

Wonder what the prim and proper matrons at the Daughters of the American Revolution think about all that?

The point is this. The common portrayal of "real" Americans as white, straight, native and Christian is not just simple minded. It is simply historically inaccurate. It's time for conservatives to stop deluding themselves that only they are patriots.