Founding fathers were village idiots.

LilOlLady

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Apr 20, 2009
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FOUNDING FATHERS WERE VILLAGE IDIOTS.

I didn't sign the Constitution. I wasn't even alive when it was made. Why should I follow it or even care? You can't sign a contract on behalf of another person without their consent.

Why are flawed old white men called our founding fathers allowed to write a document hundreds of years ago that we follow today more closely than the bible? We let them control our lives too much. I thought we did not want old white men involved in our lives?



The Myth of the
"Founding Fathers"

By: Adolf H. Nixon

Some persons, especially the extreme right-wing Republicans preach that we must go back to the ways of the "Founding Fathers." In particular, they want judges to ignore 220 years of progress and history. They desire to turn the calendar back to the politics of 1787.
For conservatives, the myth is that somehow the Founding Fathers were giants, better than we are today, smarter, more able, more clever. Above all, the conservatives argue that the Founding Fathers were more "moral" than you or me. :lol: They were like the Olympian heroes of ancient mythology, at least according to our conservative brethren. But conservatives are always looking backwards and not seeing very clearly. They have problems coping with present realities.
The conservatives want us to accede to those mythical heroes. We are expected to abandon our own good sense and trust the Founding Fathers' judgment over our own.
Of course, most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they're wiser than you are?
The term "Founding Fathers" is somewhat vague. My dictionary says that it didn't even come into use until about 1914. It was applied to the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Our Constitution or what remains of it after 27 of the most serious blunders have been corrected by amendments, rests on the philosophy, genius, morality and ethics of the rather small committee which concocted it. We must look to those Founding Fathers to see what kinds of guys they were that we should surrender our good sense to theirs.
It's important to differentiate the Constitution that the Founding Fathers cooked up from the Bill of Rights. Today when we think of the protections of the American system, we usually think of the shinning example of ethics and goodness contained in the Bill of Rights. These are the first ten amendments to the Constitution. They are primarily the work of George Mason (1725-1792). He would have been a Founding Father because he was a delegate to the convention from Virginia, but he refused to sign the Constitution. He realized that it failed to protect individual liberties and failed to oppose slavery.
Mr. Mason lobbied against adoption of the Constitution just as many of the Founding Fathers lobbied against the Bill of Rights. Most of the Founding Fathers disapproved of giving ordinary citizens such liberties as freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and torture, the right of free speech and so forth. In fact, when John Adams (1735-1826) was president (1797-1801), he took away freedom of speech.
The Bill of Rights is really the people's voice against the Founding Fathers; liberty against conformity.
Present-day conservatives and other right-wing fanatics insist that we (and especially judges) revere the Founding Fathers, sublimating our twenty-first century experience to their own. I have nothing against the Founding Fathers. They weren't so bad, but certainly not so good, either, about like conservative Republicans today. They certainly were NOT representative of the population of the country, then or now. If they represented anyone, it was a mere 2% of the population.
Number of women: 0
Number of Native Americans: 0
Number of Hispanics: 0
Number of Afro-Americans: 0
Number of poor persons: 0
Number of indentured servants: 0
Number of Jews: 0
Number of non-land owners: 0
Number of Moslems: 0
etc., etc.
None of those kinds of persons were considered important enough (then or now) to have a real say in the Constitution or its protections.
Our rather defective Constitution was patched together by the 1787 Constitutional Convention because the earlier Articles of Confederation had flopped as a frame of government. The Articles of Confederation had been written by the rabble-rouser John Dickenson (1732-1805). Even though they failed as a sane basis for a government, Dickenson was right back at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to try his hand again. At least he was smarter that George W. Bush and realized that one has to admit errors and try again.
In 1786 only 9 years after the Articles of Confederation had been tried, the old and powerful families of Virginia put together a committee to meet with delegates from the other states in order to design a better frame of government.
Rhode Island didn't care enough about it to send anybody, but representatives from the other 12 states answered an invitation issued by Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), a bastard "and illegal alien" living in New York. Ranging in age from the 27 year-old Jonathan Dayton (1760-1824) to the 82 year-old Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) the convention gathered in Philadelphia in May 1787. Altogether, the individual states appointed 65 wealthy men to be Founding Fathers, ten of them didn't bother to show up at the convention. They had important work to do and, maybe a manicure to schedule. So a mere 55 well-to-do gentlemen stopped by for grog and scones in Philadelphia during the summer of 1787. Of those 55, only 39 Founding Fathers actually liked the Constitution enough to sign it. The other 16 visited the many Philadelphia whorehouses and ambled back home.
Things might have turned out differently had Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) not been in Europe. He was one of the few voices of real civil liberty in America. Here are the 39 much-revered Founding Fathers who invented the Constitution, the guys we're supposed to look up to, the guys judges are supposed to worship:

The Conservatives' Founding Fathers /81001/
:evil:If you wonder why there are so many problems with American politics, look at how many of these guys were lawyers.

How many of these sterling Founding Fathers have you ever heard of before? and you are supposed to follow them blindly? Which ones represent you or the way you live or think? Conservatives who want you to obey these Founding Fathers have very strange morality and don't know what they're talking about.

LMAO:lol:
 
Following that logic why should we follow the "220 years of progress and history," as your article puts it? Lysander Spooner put forth a similar argument, saying that the Constitution has no force over those who had nothing to do with its inception, but his stance was consistent as he was an anarchist. This article simply puts forth this argument to attack the founders, while not applying the same standard to the rest of American history. If we shouldn't follow the Constitution because we weren't alive when it was written, what laws from the FDR administration can we ignore? And how much beloved Supreme Court precedent is now out the window since it can't obviously have any force on those of us who had nothing to do with it? And should we simply craft a new form of government all together, since we had no say in the creation of our current republic?

As for the Constitution being a document we "follow today more closely than the bible," that's obviously a ridiculous argument. Our government, which is mandated to follow the Constitution, barely follows the Constitution at all, whereas following the bible is a personal choice of each individual.
 
This is the site where this OAF wrote this...

www.prisoners.com is a nonprofit corporation of education, information and charity. Our mission is to benefit the 120,000+ state, local and federal prisoners in Pennsylvania, their families and loved ones. Further, we aim to assist prisoners everywhere.

I'd say this guy has a record, and quite an AXE to grind.

 
Yeah. We really should have had Native Americans, women, single moms, Marxists, and maybe a gay black WAC with a bad leg participating in the writing of the Constitution.

If we hadn't left it to a few old white guys to write, instead of the Constitutional document that was so brilliantly conceived and so magnificent in its simplicty, we might have a 2200 page tomb of the clarity and coherence similar to the healthcare legislation that was just passed.
 
The founding fathers were brilliant, this is one of those horrible OPs IMO.

They created the best damn government possible IMO, with checks and balances to prevent one branch from getting too much power and attempting to limit widespread corruption as much as possible. They allowed the ability to the laws to be interpreted with the changing times having SCOTUS being able to rule on it and the ability to change the constitution, but not too easy to do so.

The government they put in place, with the help of the vast resources in the land in which the country was formed, and a hard working citizenry made this country rise up from nowhere to be a world power in relatively short time considering the other powers in the world were around for centuries.

I would kindly felate anyone of the founding fathers for their brilliance:razz:
 
Yeah. We really should have had Native Americans, women, single moms, Marxists, and maybe a gay black WAC with a bad leg participating in the writing of the Constitution.

If we hadn't left it to a few old white guys to write, instead of the Constitutional document that was so brilliantly conceived and so magnificent in its simplicty, we might have a 2200 page tomb of the clarity and coherence similar to the healthcare legislation that was just passed.


Faboo!!!

:clap2::clap2::clap2:
 
Following that logic why should we follow the "220 years of progress and history," as your article puts it? Lysander Spooner put forth a similar argument, saying that the Constitution has no force over those who had nothing to do with its inception, but his stance was consistent as he was an anarchist. This article simply puts forth this argument to attack the founders, while not applying the same standard to the rest of American history. If we shouldn't follow the Constitution because we weren't alive when it was written, what laws from the FDR administration can we ignore? And how much beloved Supreme Court precedent is now out the window since it can't obviously have any force on those of us who had nothing to do with it? And should we simply craft a new form of government all together, since we had no say in the creation of our current republic?

As for the Constitution being a document we "follow today more closely than the bible," that's obviously a ridiculous argument. Our government, which is mandated to follow the Constitution, barely follows the Constitution at all, whereas following the bible is a personal choice of each individual.

:cuckoo:
If a law is not deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then the constitution has been followed. Just cause you don't like something or think you are more a constitutional scholar than the SC justices, doesn't make it true
 
Yeah. We really should have had Native Americans, women, single moms, Marxists, and maybe a gay black WAC with a bad leg participating in the writing of the Constitution.

If we hadn't left it to a few old white guys to write, instead of the Constitutional document that was so brilliantly conceived and so magnificent in its simplicty, we might have a 2200 page tomb of the clarity and coherence similar to the healthcare legislation that was just passed.

Yep. And it wasn't ratified until 1787. Quite awhile after the War was won in 1781. It was a long and arduous process.
 
Following that logic why should we follow the "220 years of progress and history," as your article puts it? Lysander Spooner put forth a similar argument, saying that the Constitution has no force over those who had nothing to do with its inception, but his stance was consistent as he was an anarchist. This article simply puts forth this argument to attack the founders, while not applying the same standard to the rest of American history. If we shouldn't follow the Constitution because we weren't alive when it was written, what laws from the FDR administration can we ignore? And how much beloved Supreme Court precedent is now out the window since it can't obviously have any force on those of us who had nothing to do with it? And should we simply craft a new form of government all together, since we had no say in the creation of our current republic?

As for the Constitution being a document we "follow today more closely than the bible," that's obviously a ridiculous argument. Our government, which is mandated to follow the Constitution, barely follows the Constitution at all, whereas following the bible is a personal choice of each individual.

:cuckoo:
If a law is not deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then the constitution has been followed. Just cause you don't like something or think you are more a constitutional scholar than the SC justices, doesn't make it true

And even these 9 Black-Robed Humans get it wrong.
 
Following that logic why should we follow the "220 years of progress and history," as your article puts it? Lysander Spooner put forth a similar argument, saying that the Constitution has no force over those who had nothing to do with its inception, but his stance was consistent as he was an anarchist. This article simply puts forth this argument to attack the founders, while not applying the same standard to the rest of American history. If we shouldn't follow the Constitution because we weren't alive when it was written, what laws from the FDR administration can we ignore? And how much beloved Supreme Court precedent is now out the window since it can't obviously have any force on those of us who had nothing to do with it? And should we simply craft a new form of government all together, since we had no say in the creation of our current republic?

As for the Constitution being a document we "follow today more closely than the bible," that's obviously a ridiculous argument. Our government, which is mandated to follow the Constitution, barely follows the Constitution at all, whereas following the bible is a personal choice of each individual.

:cuckoo:
If a law is not deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then the constitution has been followed. Just cause you don't like something or think you are more a constitutional scholar than the SC justices, doesn't make it true

And even these 9 Black-Robed Humans get it wrong.

\Maybe so, but that's the way the constitution works. Simply claiming something is unconstitutional doesn't make it so. BUt the beauty of the system is that it can be overturned.
 
:cuckoo:
If a law is not deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then the constitution has been followed. Just cause you don't like something or think you are more a constitutional scholar than the SC justices, doesn't make it true

And even these 9 Black-Robed Humans get it wrong.

\Maybe so, but that's the way the constitution works. Simply claiming something is unconstitutional doesn't make it so. BUt the beauty of the system is that it can be overturned.

Yes it can. By the people.
 
Yeah. We really should have had Native Americans, women, single moms, Marxists, and maybe a gay black WAC with a bad leg participating in the writing of the Constitution.

If we hadn't left it to a few old white guys to write, instead of the Constitutional document that was so brilliantly conceived and so magnificent in its simplicty, we might have a 2200 page tomb of the clarity and coherence similar to the healthcare legislation that was just passed.

Yep. And it wasn't ratified until 1787. Quite awhile after the War was won in 1781. It was a long and arduous process.

Doesn't that fact it had to be rewritten prove the Tea Party mentality doesn't work too well?
 
Yeah. We really should have had Native Americans, women, single moms, Marxists, and maybe a gay black WAC with a bad leg participating in the writing of the Constitution.

If we hadn't left it to a few old white guys to write, instead of the Constitutional document that was so brilliantly conceived and so magnificent in its simplicty, we might have a 2200 page tomb of the clarity and coherence similar to the healthcare legislation that was just passed.

Yep. And it wasn't ratified until 1787. Quite awhile after the War was won in 1781. It was a long and arduous process.

Doesn't that fact it had to be rewritten prove the Tea Party mentality doesn't work too well?

No. The Tea Party Movement is Defending IT.
 
Following that logic why should we follow the "220 years of progress and history," as your article puts it? Lysander Spooner put forth a similar argument, saying that the Constitution has no force over those who had nothing to do with its inception, but his stance was consistent as he was an anarchist. This article simply puts forth this argument to attack the founders, while not applying the same standard to the rest of American history. If we shouldn't follow the Constitution because we weren't alive when it was written, what laws from the FDR administration can we ignore? And how much beloved Supreme Court precedent is now out the window since it can't obviously have any force on those of us who had nothing to do with it? And should we simply craft a new form of government all together, since we had no say in the creation of our current republic?

As for the Constitution being a document we "follow today more closely than the bible," that's obviously a ridiculous argument. Our government, which is mandated to follow the Constitution, barely follows the Constitution at all, whereas following the bible is a personal choice of each individual.

:cuckoo:
If a law is not deemed unconstitutional by SCOTUS, then the constitution has been followed. Just cause you don't like something or think you are more a constitutional scholar than the SC justices, doesn't make it true

And just because you agree with the Court's assessment that it has a monopoly on deciding what is or is not constitutional doesn't make it true.
 
Doesn't that fact it had to be rewritten prove the Tea Party mentality doesn't work too well?

No. The Tea Party Movement is Defending IT.

I am not talking about the current Tea Party. ;)

If you speak of the Tea Party Of 1773? I can tell you that their disgust "Taxation without representation" was met head on. And it was more than about 'TEA' is was about unfair advantage (Which could be parlayed into the revolt of today's disgust with 'Corporations')...

But even that has been bastardized by government tinkering. So I think your point has still been addressed. And I hope you're addressing 'Free Markets'? If not you have me stumped, (Then I ask for clarification).
 

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