Why should Americans always defer to the Founding Fathers?

[RedRalph]

I'm not aware of any other country that seems to defer back to it's founders as much as the US. I have never heard and Irish person saying "That's not what Dev or the Big Fellah intended" when discussing a contemporary issue, not have I heard any Chinese person claiming they cannot do something political in 2010 because Chin Shi Huangdi* wouldn't have approved.

So, why should what the Founding Fathers intended be of any relevance to today's political and social issues? I don't know anything near enough about them to judge them, so it's not that I'm saying they are bad templates for a nation, I'm saying why should their opinions count nowadays anyway?



*just leave it, Dachs.

 

[El_Machinae]

My impression is that it's a throwback to 'honor the prophets'. There's an idea that the prophets had insight into the mind of God, and what they said was very important. Referring to the Founding Fathers is similar to that. As well, notice how people think that Darwin's (fictional) 'deathbed confession' is important? Almost as if Darwin was extra-special, and had some insight into the nature of the Universe. If a prophet recanted, that would be important to a follower. You can see this with the Mormons, where their council changes its mind, and this is 'allowed' with its doctrine. If these people had insight that we lack, then what they thought would be really important to figuring out the best way forward.

That, and common law kinda cares about preamble. Sometimes.

 

[DinoDoc]

Desire not to create "rights" by fiat when there is a perfectly good process for changing the Constitution written into the document?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Thank you for asking this, RRW, as it's something that's baffled me for a long time. I don't recall very many instances of people protesting something, saying, "But that's not what the Fathers of Confederation wanted!"

 

[Theige]

Because our founders are way more awesome than your founders.

 

[RedRalph]

Because our founders are way more awesome than your founders.

But that's the thing - even if they were, how could the opinion of men from the late 1700s possibly have all the anwers to the infitely complex of a society they never could have imagined?

you might be on to something El Machinae.

 

[Theige]

Of course they don't have all the answers. Anyone claiming they do is an idiot. Have you actually ever seen anyone claim they had "all the answers?"

 

[Miles Teg]

I think it depends on what you're talking about. Yeah, our Founding Fathers were a bunch of racist sexists from back when mercantalism was still "in", so they're probably not the people to consult on everyday politics. On the other hand, James Madison was a pretty smart cookie, and they did manage to create a constitution that works remarkably well, with a few exceptions (they had to fix the presidential election system after Washington stepped down). Seems like their opinions of the balance of power and constitutional safeguards should still be somewhat relevant.

 

[SuperJay]

They (we) shouldn't. We do, but we shouldn't.

I think people do so because it implies some kind of implicit legitimacy in your argument. We're a really, really young country. We don't have a few dozen centuries of history and culture to draw on, like many of your countries do. We've only got 200+ years, and that's an eyeblink in the span of history. So we invoke our symbols of mystical righteousness where we have them, and for a lot of Americans, those symbols are the "Founding Fathers" and the Constitution. We can't say that our Emperor is descended directly from the gods, after all.

It definitely gets carried to very great lengths. For some people, disagreeing with a provision of the Constitution or criticizing something about one of the "Founding Fathers" is a heinous sin, akin to religious blasphemy.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I imagine it's because the United States is a relatively young country, and we can still pontificate on what the founders would have wanted, whereas the parliamentarians in London really don't have any frame of reference for "what William the Conqueror would have wanted".

Also, because people are stupid. Jefferson, among many others, is made out to be someone he was not. Jefferson's vision of the United States was feudal, and Lincoln advocated sending the blacks back to Africa.

 

[BSmith1068]

My take is because this country was founded on certain principles as outlined by the “Founding Fathers”. We are not a nation that developed naturally – we are a manufactured country almost entirely made up of immigrants and new-comers to the land (having successfully exterminated most of the indigenous peoples who were here first.) We were set up with a purpose. Not because we all happened to live here.

The people today who “defer” back to the founders feel that perhaps we have gotten away from those principles, and use that as a tactic to further their political aims. (That may be a generous description)

In reality it is a play on the emotions of what our country was set up to be to further a personal political agenda. It almost always removes some context to the issue at hand and paints the issue in a method that ensures it is viewed in a better light than it otherwise would have.

 

[Dachs]

"There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void.

Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies."
-Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

 

[Mathilda]

I'll refute the "young country" argument with anecdotal evidence that Finland doesn't suffer from the same syndrome despite of being only 93 years old.

 

[NovaKart]

It's popularly believed in America that the creation of America was like an experiment to create a free and democratic society (by the standards of the time) and America was unique in the world at that time in doing so. How true this is I don't know but what's more important is that people believe it to be true. Therefore it's important to continue the tradition. I think when you tie it in with the creation of the constitution and independence from Britain being connected then it's directly related with out existence as a nation.

I think it's also related to the idea of the constitution being something which cannot be changed. People think, if you take away the 2nd ammendment for example, then what's to keep someone from taking away our freedom of speech or religion. It sounds paranoid but that's how many people think. So there's a kind of reverence for the founding fathers and the constitution.

 

[really]

Some Turks do seem to hark back to the ideals of Atatürk

 

[Arwon]

I think if anyone cited Parkes or Barton in a political debate they'd be laughed at, and Australia is only 109 years old.

 

[Formaldehyde]

It is much like the battle between the Creationists versus all the other Christians. The people who think that what the founding fathers intended is incredibly important are typically those who want to maintain the status quo and possibly even want to turn back the hands of time if in any way humanly possible. They think that society has become too liberal through the courts interpreting the Constitution to mean things which the founding fathers did not intend. That we must throw the money lenders from the temple and return to our roots before it is too late.

This is also partly due to the effects of massive propagandizing in public schools. The founders are typically venerated as part of the effort to rationalize the separation from Britain and to inculcate the notion that the US is inherently superior to all other countries.

 

[Dachs]

Some Turks do seem to hark back to the ideals of Atatürk

Understatement of the century.

 

[say1988]

I'll refute the "young country" argument with anecdotal evidence that Finland doesn't suffer from the same syndrome despite of being only 93 years old.

Hell Canada had that idea rejected (thank you Privy Council) in 1929, when the country was 62 years old, instituting the Living Tree Doctrine, saying that the writers had intended that the term "qualified person" as used in the BNA Act did not include women, but the document should be interpreted in modern times and social changes meant that the term should (and therefore did) cover women. The Canadian Constitution (through its forms) has been interpreted with this in mind since then.

I fully support this and believe all such documents should be interpreted based on modern society. The fact is that even if it were politicall possible, the government could never pass ammedments sufficiently quickly to keep it up to date.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

It definitely gets carried to very great lengths. For some people, disagreeing with a provision of the Constitution or criticizing something about one of the "Founding Fathers" is a heinous sin, akin to religious blasphemy.

As we've seen on CFC. It's just... bizarre.

I'll refute the "young country" argument with anecdotal evidence that Finland doesn't suffer from the same syndrome despite of being only 93 years old.

But surely people did live in that geographical region more than 93 years ago...?