Professor Alan Taylor’s topic in the first page of the essay is how the founding fathers, like many Americans at the time, clashed on many issues. He uses combative diction to not only suggest, but to force readers to understand that the parties clashed. He denounced the “mythic” misconception of the unity of the founding fathers to “violent” “enemies” in order to show his readers how cutthroat politics were back then. The way he would quote people would only include their party affiliation, which further deepens the gorge that divides the parties at the time. His goal is to dismantle the misbelief that the past was perfect, and that Americans should value current beliefs as an equal to old ones, and that Americans should not diminish either
