Dan Rather expresses his dislike for the Founding Fathers and others who are admired in history, believing that none is spotless and that everyone should be judged by the standards of today.

"[Y]ou won't see slave-owning, false-tooth-wearing George Washington held up for the kind of adulation he once commanded. And don't forget that George never cut down that cherry tree."
--Dan Rather in American Heritage, May/June 1996.

"School children today learn so many horror stories of oppression by the dominant cultures in American history."
"[S]o many heroes tarnished in the classroom. Never mind that it's all more or less true."
--Dan Rather in American Heritage, May/June 1996.

"The prescriptions of the Founding Fathers may have saved our skins during the Watergate crisis, but those men two hundred years ago were white slave holders who denied their wives and daughters the right to vote and whose sons would oppress the native population across the continent. Knowing all these things, we find it more difficult to hold up as paradigms the people, or even the words and feelings, that built this country."
--Dan Rather in American Heritage, May/June 1996.

Dan Rather and Bryant Gumbel discussed Time and CBS News's book People of the Century: One Hundred Men and Women Who Shaped the Last One Hundred Years:
GUMBEL: "On the women's front, Eleanor Roosevelt is obviously a given. Do we agree with the Margaret Thatcher pick?"
RATHER: "I don't, to be perfectly honest."
GUMBEL: "I don't either."
RATHER: "[M]y guess, Margaret Thatcher is there, as much as any reason, because she is a woman."
--The Early Show, December 26, 1999.

"One thing America didn't talk about early in the century was sex. Margaret Sanger changed that. She was a true revolutionary who went to jail for the crime of promoting birth control, a phrase she coined. Her efforts foreshadowed the women's movement, and secured Sanger her place on the CBS News-Time 100 list." "She knew firsthand the strains big families put on women."
"She vowed to break the conspiracy of silence that barred honest talk about family planning, and opened America's first birth control clinic, in Brooklyn, in 1916."
"She joined forces with the suffragette movement, lobbying to get women the vote, and was arrested eight times. For half a century, Margaret Sanger spoke passionately in favor of women's rights, taking on all the enemies of birth control, including the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church."
--Dan Rather on CBS's People of the Century, April 6, 1998.

"Who would stand up to [Wisconsin Senator Joe] McCarthy? Many people did, but it was Edward R. Murrow's opposition on television that signaled the end of Joe McCarthy."
--Dan Rather speaking of a CBS reporter during the 1950s. CBS Reports, June 15, 1994.

"There is a disease running rampant in this country and taking a very heavy toll. The disease is hatred. Often, it is spread by demagogues, be they politicians or preachers or, yes, broadcasters. The cure: exposure to light. It was the undoing of a United States senator named Joseph McCarthy, exposed for the demagogue he was, by CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow. It happened 40 years ago tonight on a CBS program called "See It Now," and you will see it again in tonight's Eye On America."
--Dan Rather on the CBS Evening News, March 9, 1994.

Alger Hiss, "a former U.S. State Department official accused of spying for the Soviets."
--Dan Rather on CBS Reports, June 15, 1994.
Note: Hiss was not only accused, but convicted by a jury of spying and sentenced to prison time. He tried to appeal his verdict on several occasions but was denied each time by judges appointed by both parties. The general consensus among historians and CIA officials is that he was a spy. Intercepted communications between the KGB and its U.S. agents, known as the Venona Papers, refer to a person named "Ales," whom intelligence experts identify as Alger Hiss. print_file('footer'); ?>