Don't forget (especially you Mr. Nick
) that the American revolutionists and Founding Fathers were all liberals.
You really believe that huh? You only prove you don't know a damn thing about the founding fathers because NONE of them had anything in common with modern liberals! In addition liberals were the kind of people the founders warned their descendants about!
The founders were near anarchists and sorry to be the one to break it to you, true anarchists are right wingers, NOT liberals! (Some extremist liberals call themselves "anarchists" but they are not real ones and are actually leftwing extremists. Faux anarchists want to use creating chaos as a tool for them to grab ultimate power and take control over others. But true anarchists are right wing and want no government at all and no one to have institutionalized power.) Liberalism is all about large, powerful, centralized government -you can't have the favorite policies of the liberals without it. In order to get it means eroding the power of the people. You can't have a nanny government liberals want without a large, powerful government -the VERY thing the founders bent over backwards to NOT create and to throw as many roadblocks in the way to slow it from becoming one.
The founders FEARED government while liberals ADULATE it as an all knowing, all wise entity that can run your life better than you can and therefore the liberal ruling elite should really be the ones making the most important decisions on your behalf -because people are too stupid to be trusted to make good decisions in their own best interests.
So right off the bat you got it wrong about the liberals being political liberals. They were political radicals of the time because their ideas were radical -but those ideas are NOT radical at all TODAY. Their ideas are considered to be EXTREMELY conservative today in this country. There were no conservatives and liberals at that time - and the name "conservative" didn't come along until much later and was used to refer to those who thought any deviation away from the Constitution as written should be minimal and very CONSERVATIVE.
Now try to develop some critical thinking skills here for this one, ok? Since conservatives favor the Constitution as written -they can't possibly be more conservative than the people who wrote it! That means since the founders were satisfied with it just the way they wrote it, they were actually even MORE conservative than modern conservatives. Trying to apply today's labels of liberal or conservative to the founders is pretty silly in the first place since those who try to do it are like you -totally ignorant about the origins of the use of "conservative" as a political label in the first place! ROFL
The founders were political radicals of that age because the ideas were radical at the time - but were NOT people who held modern liberal values at all. Far leftwing extremism is totalitarianism -large, powerful government with near total control of the individual. Far right wing extremism is the opposite of that -no government at all and therefore no government control of the individual at all. Democracy itself is actually a right wing concept -not a leftwing concept or value! In fact leftwing extremism opposes the idea of allowing people to freely choose their own leaders -because history has already proven they invariably end up rejecting THEM -which cannot be allowed.
The founders were right wingers -and created THE most right wing government in existence, a system never before seen, one totally unlike any in the world. It was an experiment in going the OTHER way, rejecting the longstanding traditional model of government -of a leftwing near totalitarian state where a ruling elite held all the power and the people had no means of removing them and choosing their own leaders instead. In fact they went so far to the right toward anarchy with their first attempt with the Articles of Confederacy, they left federal government too weak and without enough power to fulfill the minimal role they gave it. So they spent a few years more re-working it and came up with the United States Constitution. Which in case you didn't happen to know it -is a RIGHT WING DOCUMENT that is totally incompatible with LEFT WING values of a nanny state.
In case you forgot, the founders JUST got done with a war against a big, powerful government claiming the absolute right to control the individual -and they REJECTED it. They didn't just reject the one in Great Britain -they rejected the entire model of leftwing government, they rejected every existing model of government in existence at the time along with every past model to have ever existed. They created a new one -one that was and IS rejected by the far left!
LEFT WING values REQUIRE big powerful government, they LOVE it, they BELIEVE in it. They want to make government our master -for our own good of course. But the founders believed in the inherent right of the individual to run his own life, be his own master and make his own decisions for better or ill. Those were RADICAL ideas then and they are still ideas modern liberals REJECT. But they are ones conservatives believe in too.
So no, the founders sure as hell were NOT modern political liberals -so let's see if they were social liberals instead. And sorry -they were not social radicals. They not only had NO desire to make any fundamental change in the nature of society, their MANY, MANY writings reveal they were actually very socially conservative and people who believed that a moral and religious people were the necessary backbone of any great nation.
Washington also said "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." The founders believed government was to be the carefully controlled servant of man and NEVER his master. But liberals so strongly believe their motives are just so ......so.....PURE and NOBLE that the government they would create should not only be the master, the people would also believe so much in it they would gladly abandon their own judgment for that of the benevolent, all wise, all knowing government liberals are convinced they can create.
The founders were LIBERALS? ROFLMAO! Get real. The Heritage of the Founding Fathers evaluated 15,000 quotes from the founders that came from newspapers, articles, speeches etc. Fully 34% of the quotes said by the founders came from the BIBLE, the other main sources for their quotes came from Locke, Montesque, Blackstone and the like. Who took fully 60% of their own quotes from the Bible!
Thomas Jefferson:
"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
John Adams:
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
George Washington:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports . . . . Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principle."
John Adams:
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Samuel Adams:
"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
Benjamin Franklin:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Thomas Jefferson:
"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you."
George Washington:
"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."
James McHenry:
"Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience."
Benjamin Rush:
"In contemplating the political institutions of the United States, I lament, that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes, and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity, by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism."
Noah Webster:
"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character. . . . When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor, he betrays the interest of his country." And again:
"When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, "just men who will rule in the fear of God."
I could continue but I think you get the idea. Do you SERIOUSLY see any of these men standing on the steps of the Supreme Court insisting women not only have a right to kill their unwanted babies -but that taxpayers should be forced to pay for it? Think these men whose own words reveal the depth of their religious beliefs and their thoughts about the necessity of a moral society -would be advocating for gay marriage and demanding the state recognize the relationship between two men or two women as a marriage? Think they would advocate for the creation of new human life in order to kill and cannibalize it so an older human life will benefit -and that taxpayers should have to pay for that? Think they really believed that having an adulterous affair shouldn't affect someone's ability to get elected to high office? How about promoting the idea that having children out of wedlock was a good thing and not an issue of morality? That expanding entitlements in order to get more and more people taking government handouts was a good and moral thing? If you believe they would favor any of the pet policies of the left, you are nuts -NONE of these are consistent with their idea of what made a moral and religious society they believed was critically necessary for any great nation!
How are the very words of the founders regarding how critical it is for the republic to both have a virtuous society as well as upright, moral people elected to office -consistent with the liberal position that morality is irrelevant? That society has no right to encourage moral behavior, that religion that has no place in the public square? That the Constitution actually requires government to treat atheism, the lack of any religious belief - as if it were a religion itself? So OBVIOUSLY these men were the furthest thing from being social liberals -they not only believed it was critical to have a virtuous, moral and religious society, but to elect men to office of that same nature!
Your entire statement that the founders were LIBERALS -either politically or socially - is laughably IGNORANT to anyone who who has actually studied REAL US history -and can EASILY prove your ignorant claim is just that. Completely ignorant.
