If our Founding Fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, they wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

In Colbert’s satirical persona, the line lampoons a strain of American isolationism by pushing it to an absurd literalism: treating the Declaration of Independence as if it were a declaration of independence from “the world” rather than from British rule. The joke exposes how appeals to the “Founding Fathers” can be used rhetorically to shut down debate about foreign policy, global responsibility, or international cooperation. By misreading history on purpose, the quip highlights the gap between patriotic slogans and historical reality, and it critiques the tendency to invoke founding-era authority as a blanket justification for disengagement from global affairs.