My Beef with the Founding Fathers
One of the main things I never understood about the US (along with amish people, lacrosse and the drinking age being set at 21) was the idea that the founding fathers provided some sort of guiding light towards economic prosperity, social justice etc.
Ron Paul talks a lot of sense, but he seems to back up a lot of stuff with 'what the founding fathers intended'*. And he's not alone; all of them Tea Party gobshites are at it, too.*
What qualifications or real experience did the founding fathers have? They were just a bunch of guys who came together and wrote an idealised version of what an 18th century country could be..
Its true they had some good ideas which have stood the test of time, but that doesn't make all of their principles perfect. Why are people trying to apply their principles to the 21st fucking century and expecting them to work?!
(*Glenn Beck and Michael Moore do it too, but they're ruh-tards).
Not sure why you caught MS so quickly, but my take is that there's always a crowd who entertains fundamentalist thinking in its most pure form. In the case of the US, that would likely be what the Founding Fathers suggested. Indeed, their principles and morals may not fit much of the modern political or economic atmosphere, but the ideas they engendered were the basis of this country's success; that's what drives people to ask, "should we revert to these principles in times of hardship?"
It is very difficult to change a country's identity; China has held on to its cultural roots even through the 70's, when the government literally said, "the old culture is blasphemy." It took complete military destruction and economic reconstruction to shift the German national identity post-WWII. It is unlikely that any of what defines America today will change within our lifetime, and the ideas harbored by the Fathers, right or wrong, will likely continue to be accepted as what is "good" for the nation.
Let me preface this comment by stating that I detest the Ron Paul movement, mostly because the movement attempts to rigidly apply ONE 18th century governing domestic and international philosophy to 21st century America without so much as acknowledging that 1) the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were all compromise documents, that 2) the founding fathers were far from ideological agreement with one another and 3) the incredible nuance and complexity of some issues and the fact that the America of today is a far, far cry from the relatively homogeneous, agrarian 18th century America that took 3 months by boat to communicate with Europe.
That said, the founding fathers of the United States were clearly among the wisest--if not THE wisest--founders of a nation in the history of the human race. They bitterly debated issues with one another and resolved their conflicts largely peacefully; the founders were almost all wealthy Englishmen who were literally gambling on snake eyes when they rebelled against the most powerful military force on the planet at the time; and when the opportunity to seize absolute power was presented to them they turned it down, agreeing instead to limit their own power and submit themselves to a national compact--the rule of law. Where the American Revolution resulted in increased liberty and the rule of law, the French Revolution--a contemporary revolution partly inspired by the American Revolution--resulted in mass murder and unmitigated despotism.
To go further, the founding fathers observed history and actually learned from it. They observed the failings of human beings and of past governments and they peacefully but forcefully debated their points, negotiated and hammered out a great compromise based on fundamental principles of human liberty and constitutionally limited government that endure today. These principles have allowed the United States to emerge as the most powerful nation in the history of the world, and while our European contemporaries prosecute people for free speech "violations", for example, our Supreme Court maintains nearly unlimited free speech rights, demonstrating the enduring nature of our culture set forth by our wise founders.
Holy shit. +1
You mean the philosophy that allowed the USA to become the wealthiest nation in human history? That philosophy? The one that generated the huge wealth that was squandered during the 20th century via social programs?
You and the people who think like you REALLY deserve what's coming, i.e. economic armageddon.
This paragraph, In my opinion, is almost entirely false. Unmitigated despotism? Mass Murder?? There was just the one "despot" - Napoleon, and he came into power as a result of a military coup. Mass Murder - I'm not sure there was more bloodshed in France than there was in the US during the war for independence.
You spin a good and patriotic tale here V-tech, but the reality is much less glamorous - there's a huge element of luck in the success of the USA, a fortunate toss of the die.
I'll leave the discussion about free speech for someone else to handle - does the US really have freer speech than the western European nations?
Question - Are you sure they were all Englishmen? I was of the opinion that you had a mixed bag of Europeans, and though they were probably dominated by the English in numbers, I believe there was French and Dutch representation as well.
Robespierre dude. Between 16 and 40k people were killed during it.
double post
This is what we call a butchering of history. Ever heard of the Reign of Terror, the Committee on Public Safety, or Robes Pierre? Do you recall reading about the mass persecution of the Catholic Church during the French Revolution? The French Revolution morphed into the very core of what despotism is.
The American founding fathers aren't one in the same as the revolutionaries--they were the politicians and leaders who led the revolution, debated and signed the Declaration of Independence and debated and ratified the US Constitution, as well as the generals of the army--these are the people who are colloquially referred to as the founding fathers. The signers of the Declaration of Independence, for example, were all English subjects, hence there were Englishmen in the same way that an Asian-American is equally an American.
A few points. The southern US and northern US were not homogenous. Large cultural divides existed between the largely southern/western welsh, scots and irish that immigrated to the american south and the dutch, english and others that came to the NE. There were riots that happened in places like Boston and Philadelphia that prevented immigrants from Ireland/Scotland/Wales when people from there tried to immigrate, and when they did, they were often forced in to the backwaters/unsettled territories.
The founders didn't appeal so much to the complex issues in the bill of rights. They moreso just made rights that prevented the federal government from doing things that would allow for the rising of a new dictator, such as disallowing the federal governments ability to court troops in homes, disallowing the federal govt from making laws respecting religions and free speech given that these were institutions and practices that were at the center of civil life etc. They left the complex issues largely to the states to decide on their own, and for the coming congresses.
Homoegeneity is relative. You had a nation that was white, Christian, and largely agrarian. If you consider Welch, Irish, and German heterogeneous that's fine--but we're comparing the heterogeneity of 18th century America and 21st century America--it's not even close. That's the point. By any modern scale America circa 1781 would be little different than Switzerland today.
^^^ great post
Who is in your picture and why is she there?
Teenage love interest?
I hate the idea of a "living constitution"...it seems inherently corruptible. But we cannot expect a historical document to conform with the realities of modernity.
We must recognize that the founding father's could not have foreseen the changes of the past 250 years. Rather than live by the letter of the law, we must live by its spirit. As VT4Ever said, our founders clearly intended that we have nearly unlimited free speech. We must respect, and hopefully protect, that tradition.
Nothing is unchangeable. Even the constitution allows for itself to be rewritten via a constitutional convention. But we haven't done so. Brushing aside the practical reasons for not calling a constitutional convention, we like our identity. We choose to live under the constitution, and the freedom it promises. Immigrants have chosen to come to the US for hundreds of years for that very promise.
No matter how close we drift to the nanny state, it is my belief that most Americans value the freedom to fail and to succeed. We would rather try and fail than live in a society of guaranteed mediocrity.
stopped reading after you said you didn't like lacrosse
Here in the UK we have no written codified constitution and the laws of Parliament are not bound on future Parliaments. Today's Parliament can simply change the constitution by passing new Acts of Parliament. As a result of this, in my opinion, you end up with rule by the uneducated masses and laws are passed to pander to ideas/special interests that may sound good in theory but have many unintended consequences. Since moving here I can see the effects of this; a society that has gradually become a police state with CCTV camera's watching your every move, phone conversations tapped, successive governments proposing to introduce national ID card schemes, an errosion of civil liberties and a clamp down on free speech......but oh well, I can still get a cheap pint and watch the footy on TV!
I think that such an emphasis on the founding fathers and their feats is foolish. The constitution should be a "living document", because times change and society changes.
While the founding fathers were very wise and brace men, relying on them is an extreme form of banality. Jesus was a great guy, but you don't seriously go around saying to yourself "what would jesus do?"
Actually, "what would Jesus do?" may be adequate. "What did Jesus do?", on the other hand, would very likely fall flat on it's face.
Not really. Asking that question (or realistically "what would the founding fathers do?") resolves nothing. You would not get a clear answer for almost any issue, such as monetary policy, healthcare laws, campaign funding by corporations, etc, just because these issues were not present in the 18th century and because the problems faced by the nation then are much different than what the nation faces today. In the end trying to mimic someone's mentality from 250 years ago is completely pointless, ineffective and constitutes a form a self-delusion.
Are you aware of the argument of the "living constitution?" See here for an argument not in favor of a laws that must be changed only by legislatures as opposed to courts.
I completely agree with this. As humans we have learned an absurd amount about science, math, communications, and technology, among other things, since the 18th century. If the Founding Fathers lived in our world today it is quite safe to say they would not view things the exact same as they did previously. Additionally, the Founding Fathers, while prescient, were just 46 men, and they did not have access to the type of advanced statistical methods needed to accuarately conduct social science, political, and economic analysis. With how much the human race has learned in the last 225+ years, it seems absurd to me that we still follow the writings of 46 men from the 18th century so closely.
Although I will add that the Founding Fathers are rolling in their graves over what a police state we've become, and rightfully so.
Pardon me if this is naïve, but to me, the genius of the founding fathers was their key insight that the federal government should have extremely limited powers. Forget about, for a minute, their ideas about the bicameral system - our Congress is purposely gridlocked to the point where it's a bit ridiculous. They set a precedent of economic and social liberty that allowed our nation to become what it is today.
This thread is full of people talking about how the founding fathers lived too long ago to know what's good for us, but nobody's pointed out any specific examples. Limited federal power? Fine by me. Freedom of speech, assembly, press, etc.? Perfect. China doesn't have that. I can't currently think of an issue that has become too obsolete, so to speak, for the founding fathers to have covered.
I will comment that, given our advanced statistical methods to conduct economic analysis, we sure as hell still don't understand the economy.
How about foreign policy, abortion and gay marriage?
Abortion and gay marriage ARE addressed in the Bill of Rights--the 10th Amendment delegates to the states (or to the people) all powers not specifically designated to the federal government.
With regard to foreign policy, the founders had wildly different perspectives on what good international policy would look like, but I'd argue that all of those 18th century positions--war hawks, isolationists, etc.--are obsolete in a post world war world. Where the founders came to an agreement is that the executive branch via the President would be the commander-in-chief--that civilians would be in control of the military and not the military in control of itself. You can see the brilliance in this position as countless nations--nation after nation--have fallen under military dictatorship. Take Egypt, for example--when the recent regime fell the military was an independent branch of government and it is now in a power struggle with the elected officials. In essense, Egypt has 2 governments--an elected government and a government with power because it has bullets.
This thread is one of the best I have read on this site. I love the insightful, well supported points and counter points made. (Of course there are the usual exceptions to this). I just wanted to say well done.
I, too, never fully understood this subject very well. These are my speculations on why people believe the 21st century should defer to the 18th. 1. Laziness: People just don't want to put the level of effort it requires to debate the issues like the founding fathers did and arrive at their own, 21st century relevant, conclusions. 2. Stupidity: People just don't have the mental power required to engage in the type of discourse that leads to documents like the Constitution or Bill of Rights. 3. Lack of confidence in their ability because of (2). So they sort of defer to the documents that they know where written by people who were more intelligent than them. They also believe the Founding Fathers could foresee and do a better job of assessing the future than they can do with their own present.
And it's that lack of confidence that really gets me. In theory, we have more resources available to us today to make more informed judgments about human nature, more recorded history for learning from the past, more predictive capability about our future and perhaps more security in our abilities [of survival, among other things]. The founding fathers didn't have CIA advising them about the world's every move when they pondered foreign policy yet they managed to tackle it somehow. So why this lack of confidence in thinking for ourselves as a new nation, I don't know. And I am afraid the country will keep getting pulled back and never reinvent itself if that trend continues.
oh you have a problem with lacrosse?
eat my toilet paper
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