Did Our Founding Fathers Have a Crystal Ball?

[Realists]

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared... To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt... We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.

- Thomas Jefferson

I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of its being a public blessing.

- Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799

If industry and labor are left to take their own course, they will generally be directed to those objects which are the most productive, and this in a more certain and direct manner than the wisdom of the most enlightened legislature could point out.

- James Madison

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.

- James Madison
Federalist 62, February 27, 1788

I could go on but I don't want to write a book instead of a thread. I am sure you all get the idea though. I find it rather chilling how accurate they were. They weren't trying to make predictions, they were simply trying to warn us what not to do and it seems like todays government is doing it all wrong. There is too much name calling, finger pointing, and "the other party is the wrong party" going on anymore for us to run a real government. It was such a simple thing to do and yet we could not pull it off. What I speak of is the crazy idea (to the politicians these days anyway) that our government could have an ounce of honesty or care for the people they actually represent. We have drifted from the principles and values that sculpted this once amazing nation. As a parting note, how about I throw up a quote from the politicians today just to drive my point home...

I'm sure David Letterman will probably be talking about it and Jay Leno will be talking about it; we've got $1.8 million to study why pigs smell.

- Senator Tom Harkin,
March 4, 2009

In 200 years will they look back on this time we are living in right now with the same respect we do when we look back 200 years? I ask myself that question every day and still cannot come up with the answer I want to hear. Something needs to change, many things need to change, for the sake of our children and their children and the future of this nation.

 

[Katzndogz]

They were well educated. Not like the flotsam of today.

 

[Old Rocks]

Thomas Jefferson Feared an Aristocracy of Corporations | The Nation

But Jefferson did not stop there.

He was, as well, a relentless critic of the monopolizing of economic power by banks, corporations and those who put their faith in what the third president referred to as "the selfish spirit of commerce (that) knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
Jefferson might not have wanted a lot of government, but he wanted enough government to assert the sovereignty of citizens over corporations. To his view, nothing was more important to the health of the republic.

In the early years of the 19th century, as banks and corporations began to flex their political muscles, he announced that: “I hope we shall crush… in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
There are those who would have us believe that the founders intended for corporations to control our elections – and, tragically, five of these Tories sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, where they recently ruled that the nation’s biggest businesses may spend whatever they like to buy the results that best serve their bottom lines.

The better angels among the founders would be aghast.

 

[tap4154]

They really laid a great foundation for us, and anticipated folks like BO and the Neo-Democrat-Socialists trying to bring America down by bloating gov't and ripping away personal freedoms, opportunity, and responsibility.

It's all there in the Constitution, and their own writings. Unfortunately, very little of this is taught in our Dem/union-run public schools (mush farms) these days, so were have several generations that know very little of our Founding Fathers, except that they were "evil, rich, white, slave owners".

Of course, it's to the Dem-union advantage to keep kids ignorant, so that's precisely what they do. Then, sadly, they go to college only to get indoctrinated in far left socialist views by all the sunken-chested, wheat-grass-eating, anti-American lib professors that infest our universities...

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

They really laid a great foundation for us, and anticipated folks like BO and the Neo-Democrat-Socialists trying to bring America down by bloating gov't and ripping away personal freedoms, opportunity, and responsibility.

It's all there in the Constitution, and their own writings. Unfortunately, very little of this is taught in our Dem/union-run public schools (mush farms) these days, so were have several generations that know very little of our Founding Fathers, except that they were "evil, rich, white, slave owners".

Of course, it's to the Dem-union advantage to keep kids ignorant, so that's precisely what they do. Then, sadly, they go to college only to get indoctrinated in far left socialist views by all the sunken-chested, wheat-grass-eating, anti-American lib professors that infest our universities...

Actually the Framers foresaw the likes of you, and composed the Bill of Rights in response.

 

[Avatar4321]

They really laid a great foundation for us, and anticipated folks like BO and the Neo-Democrat-Socialists trying to bring America down by bloating gov't and ripping away personal freedoms, opportunity, and responsibility.

It's all there in the Constitution, and their own writings. Unfortunately, very little of this is taught in our Dem/union-run public schools (mush farms) these days, so were have several generations that know very little of our Founding Fathers, except that they were "evil, rich, white, slave owners".

Of course, it's to the Dem-union advantage to keep kids ignorant, so that's precisely what they do. Then, sadly, they go to college only to get indoctrinated in far left socialist views by all the sunken-chested, wheat-grass-eating, anti-American lib professors that infest our universities...

Actually the Framers foresaw the likes of you, and composed the Bill of Rights in response.

Yep. They sure did. They saw politicians who would try to stamp out our free speech, our media, our freedom of religion and assembly. They forsaw politicians who would try to take away our weapons and means of self defense and protection. And they wrote the Bill of Rights to protect us from those people.