Founding father James Madison sidelined by woke history in his own home
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 in view of Montpelier, Madison’s plantation home in rural Virginia, or at its modern visitor’s center. 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 Montpelier Foundation, the non-profit that runs the estate, posted a press release to its website on July 18 taking issue with the tenor of The Post’s coverage, but only contesting points that the report did not make, and disregarding The Post’s in-person observations.
