Founding Fathers vs. Founders

[Baker, John]

        The Supreme Court, at least, has long preferred founders or
Founders, using that term much longer and more often than Founding Fathers.
See, e.g., Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 37 U.S. 657, 736 (1838), and
hundreds of more recent cases.  The more casual "Founding Fathers" seems to
go back only to Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652, 685 (1945)
(Reed, J., dissenting).

John Baker


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ittaob at AOL.COM [SMTP:Ittaob at AOL.COM]
> Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 11:37 PM
> To:   ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject:      Founding Fathers vs. Founders
>
>     I just read the July 2 Newsweek, which has an article called "Founders
> Chic" about Jefferson, Adams, et al. The article calls them the
> "Founders,"
> stating parenthetically "no longer called the Founding Fathers for reasons
> of
> political correctness." This raised several questions in my mind.
>
>     1. When did this happen? I am a well-read attorney (not a linguist),
> and
> this is the first time I've seen the supposed change in terminology. Are
> there citations out there? Is this real, or did Newsweek make it up?
>
>     2. Why did this happen? I understand and support avoiding the use of
> "men" and other male-derived terms to refer to groups of humans consisting
> of
> men and women.  But, gee, for gosh sakes, the Founding Fathers were all,
> dare
> we say it, men. Why does political correctness even enter into the
> equation?
> To fool some sensitive schoolgirls into thinking, for a year or two, that
> there were a few women in the group? I don't get it.
>
>     Will the next article be referring to "T. Jefferson and J. Adams (no
> longer called Thomas and John for reasons of political correctness)"?
>
>     By the way, Newsweek elsewhere in the article refers to them as
> "genuine
> statesmen."
>
>     Steve Boatti