ABC's 'This Week': Founding Fathers Were 'Guys Who Didn't Give Women the Vote and Let Slavery Stand'

ABC's "This Week" began its Independence Day weekend program with a segment that echoed Time magazine's cover story questioning whether the Constitution matters anymore.

After historian Douglas Brinkley said, "We shouldn't act like [the Founding Fathers] were somehow omnipotent," ABC's John Donvan responded, "They were not gods, they were guys - guys who didn't give women the vote and let slavery stand" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, HISTORIAN: It's a very slippery slope to start cherry-picking your favorite golden oldie from the Founding Fathers and slapping it on to political speeches today. Democrats and Republicans quote from the Founding Fathers, but we shouldn't act like they were somehow omnipotent.

JOHN DONVAN, ABC: The reality is that the framers - posed in paintings as though frozen on an American Olympus - they were not gods, they were guys - guys who didn't give women the vote and let slavery stand for the time being and who, by the way, were trying to create at the time a stronger central government, of course not too strong, leaving to us a Constitution that we could fix, as needed, - sorry, make that amend - which we've now done 27 times.

BRINKLEY: When you look at the founding documents of our country, they are elastic, they’re meant to be pulled and bent in different directions as each era dictates.

I guess the liberal media believe it will be easier for our nation to depart from the Constitution's tenets if they can diminish the reverence people have for its authors.

Nice discussion to be having as our nation celebrates its birth.