Why do we ask what the founding fathers would have wanted?

[buddhallah_the_christ]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

 

[Delta4Embassy]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

Think the Founders would be the ones calling for a revolution the loudest.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

OMG you could not have asked a dumber question. Conservatives are intellectuals who seek the wisdom of the past starting with Aristotle, and then incorporate it into modern life.

Liberals are perfectly 100% stupid and think like Nike: Just do it!! or just quess and not take the trouble to get an education. This is what Hitler Stalin and Mao( our greatest liberals) did.

Imagine if you were on on Island and had to invent cars trains medicine. You would be back in the stone age and die with less than nothing invented. All that we know we know from our forebears.

Welcome to kindergarten!!

 

[Ernie S.]

We look to the founders to get a sense of their intent when writing the Constitution.
There is a wealth of information regarding that in the notes of the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers.
The founders were largely educated, but not novelists or poets. Their words cannot be interpreted as one would interpret Shakespeare. They are to be taken literally using definitions common in the late 18th century.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

We look to the founders to get a sense of their intent when writing the Constitution.
There is a wealth of information regarding that in the notes of the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers.
The founders were largely educated, but not novelists or poets. Their words cannot be interpreted as one would interpret Shakespeare. They are to be taken literally using definitions common in the late 18th century.

we look to the Founders because they were geniuses who created the greatest country in human history by far. They wanted us to follow their Constitution because they knew we would be stupid fools wondering in the desert without it.

If they had faith in us they would have had us vote on everything.

 

[Teddy Pollins]

Because they wrote the Constitution for a reason. England, our legal ancestors, kept their constitution unwritten and changed it often. That practice permits a great many abuses which the founding generation wished to thwart.
Thus, writing down a constitution inhibits some of those dangers.

 

[PratchettFan]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

The founders are dead and can't speak for themselves. So it is easy to claim my point must be correct because it was the intent of the founders. And that must be true because it is what Jesus would have said.

 

[Correll]

THe Founders did an incredible job on writing a Constitution, something very few people in history have had the experience and'or desire to do well.

As such their opinions are to be respected and more likely than most to contain wisdom that might be relevant to certain types of questions.

 

[danielpalos]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

We don't. Our Founding Fathers told us what to do and spake it so in Article the Sixth.

 

[NYcarbineer]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

It isn't a valid argument unless you believe all progress ended at the end of the 18th century.

It's just a fallacious appeal to authority that especially conservatives like to use when it suits their agenda.

 

[Correll]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

It isn't a valid argument unless you believe all progress ended at the end of the 18th century.

It's just a fallacious appeal to authority that especially conservatives like to use when it suits their agenda.

It can be used as an Appeal to Authority.

But not ever reference to the FOunding Fathers is like that.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

It isn't a valid argument unless you believe all progress ended at the end of the 18th century.

Liberals are naturally stupid and illiterate. Conservatives believe progress ended 2500 years ago when Aristotle discovered natural law.

If we have made progress beyond Aristotle and Jefferson why did the liberal clean forget to tell us what it is??

Liberal: progress is magical soviet regulators and crippling welfare, obviously!!

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

As such their opinions are to be respected and more likely than most to contain wisdom that might be relevant to certain types of questions.

100% stupid and 10000% liberal of course!! Certain situations??? Like when you want to create the greatest country in human history by far, save civilization on earth through two world wars, and shepard you through centuries of unimagined technological change?

see why we have to be positive that liberalism is based in pure ignorance??

 

[NYcarbineer]

It isn't a valid argument unless you believe all progress ended at the end of the 18th century.

Liberals are naturally stupid and illiterate. Conservatives believe progress ended 2500 years ago when Aristotle discovered natural law.

If we have made progress beyond Aristotle and Jefferson why did the liberal clean forget to tell us what it is??

Liberal: progress is magical soviet regulators and crippling welfare, obviously!!

lol, natural law says that if you're stronger than your neighbor you're entitled to kill him and take everything he owns.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

lol, natural law says that if you're stronger than your neighbor you're entitled to kill him and take everything he owns.

yes dear and that explains why Jefferson wrote about it in the Declaration!!

see why we say 100% stupid!!

 

[g5000]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

Your post is yet one more of many reasons why every living soul on the planet should read Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others and how little he alludes to his own, while the reverse occurs in France. There the most trifling litigation is never conducted without the introduction of an entire system of ideas peculiar to the counsel employed; and the fundamental principles of law are discussed in order to obtain a rod of land by the decision of the court. This abnegation of his own opinion and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France.

The French codes are often difficult to comprehend, but they can be read by everyone; nothing, on the other hand, can be more obscure and strange to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents. The absolute need of legal aid that is felt in England and the United States, and the high opinion that is entertained of the ability of the legal profession, tend to separate it more and more from the people and to erect it into a distinct class. The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for like them he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.

And, indeed, the lawyer-like character that I am endeavoring to depict is most distinctly to be met with in England: there laws are esteemed not so much because they are good as because they are old; and if it is necessary to modify them in any respect, to adapt them to the changes that time operates in society, recourse is had to the most inconceivable subtleties in order to uphold the traditionary fabric and to maintain that nothing has been done which does not square with the intentions and complete the labors of former generations. The very individuals who conduct these changes disclaim any desire for innovation and had rather resort to absurd expedients than plead guilty to so great a crime. This spirit appertains more especially to the English lawyers; they appear indifferent to the real meaning of what they treat, and they direct all their attention to the letter, seeming inclined to abandon reason and humanity rather than to swerve one tittle from the law. English legislation may be compared to the stock of an old tree upon which lawyers have engrafted the most dissimilar shoots in the hope that, although their fruits may differ, their foliage at least will be confused with the venerable trunk that supports them all.

Tocqueville: Book I Chapter 16

 

[g5000]

The old "they wuz slaveowners and therefore morally bankrupt" argument is a classic ad hominem logical fallacy usually perpetrated by very ignorant people.

The argument basically boils down to a familiar gambit; that we are better ruled by extemporaneous decisions which accommodate current conditions (usually a crisis) rather than try to live by time-tested precedents.

A seductive argument for those who are ignorant.

Why is this dangerous? Simple. If a totalitarian wanted to make a power grab during a crisis (as many Presidents have tried to do), he would be better able to justify his actions by claiming to be a modern man dealing with modern problems and that antiquated precedents are a nuisance and an obstacle to achieving what he has convinced enough sheep are the necessary goals for the "good of the people".

When the crisis has passed, at a time entirely determined by the totalitarian it has passed (is the War on Terror over yet?), it is inevitable the expanded powers which were granted to deal with it will not be revoked. They will remain forever.

 

[g5000]

I don't understand this tradition.
My question is what exactly is the purpose of using the founding fathers or even the foundations of the United States as a means of creating laws in today's society. From what I understand none of the people who made a lot of the rules today are no longer alive. So why would we care what these people wanted? Maybe this is a stupid question but whenever I hear people argue about politics almost inevitably someone brings up the foundations of the country. I always thought that what was more important was what was better for the people in that society. So can someone please clarify why this seems to be a valid argument?

It isn't a valid argument unless you believe all progress ended at the end of the 18th century.

It's just a fallacious appeal to authority that especially conservatives like to use when it suits their agenda.

It can be used as an Appeal to Authority.

An appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the person is speaking outside their area of expertise. Therefore, it is not a fallacy to use James Madison as an authority on the Constitution. But it would be a fallacy to use James Madison as an authority on microwave ovens were he alive today.

"James Madison says Kenmore is better than Westinghouse. So there!"

 

[suplex3000]

I think it's problematic because personally I get really offended when people put on the tri-corner hat and trot out the Founders to use against me. Just for example, say it's a Libertarian arguing with me that the Founders wouldn't want us to have Social Security.

 

[Blackrook]

Without a Constitution, there is no legal barrier stopping a tyrant from grabbing all power for himself, and using that power to oppress the people. See how much Obama is wrecking America with his complete disregard for the Constitution and the laws as clearly written. Unfortunately, it would appear that the Supreme Court has been intimidate into going along Obama's lawlessness.