Why should the Founding Fathers' ideas still be relevant to Americans?

[The Imp]

But he's an intellectual. And the labeling of intellectuals as "elitist" and then using that as an attack on them in order to win elections for true elitists is pretty much SOP for the GOP in the US now. They'd never tolerate a Jefferson.

Of course not, he wasn't a Christian. Jefferson would be unelectable in the United States today.

 

[yesboii]

Of course not, he wasn't a Christian. Jefferson would be unelectable in the United States today.

He certainly wasn't orthodox in his beliefs but Thomas Jefferson certainly was a Christian.

 

[The Imp]

He certainly wasn't orthodox in his beliefs but Thomas Jefferson certainly was a Christian.

Nope, he was in

"...a sect by myself, as far as I know."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

He can most easily be characterized as a Deist.

 

[Dachs]

Radical liberalism had to wait until 1789.

Surely 1793?

But he's an intellectual. And the labeling of intellectuals as "elitist" and then using that as an attack on them in order to win elections for true elitists is pretty much SOP for the GOP in the US now. They'd never tolerate a Jefferson.

Are we at CFC intellectuals?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

So I guess the question from the OP is probably why this isn't done with the founding fathers. They had good ideas - but relevant for the times that they were living in. Why should their words count as gospel, when we've had a lot of changes in.. well.. everything?

I mean, I'm sure the founding dudes of Canada (that's what we actually call them, founding dudes) were smart too, but a modern world calls for a modern outlook that the founding dudes were lacking (no offense to them, it wasn' their fault!)

*sigh* They're the Fathers of Confederation, and to this day nobody can agree on exactly how many there were and who should be considered one. A quick scan of Wiki says that Joey Smallwood considered himself the last Father of Confederation... I wonder if there will be others if the Territories ever achieve status as Provinces?

Or you could take the Wayne & Shuster point of view (I tried to find a photo or screencap, but couldn't)...

(for those who never saw those episodes, W & S informed us that the "Fathers" of Confederation were really the MOTHERS of Confederation... )

I think the U.S. is one of the only countries in the world (or the only?) where people go: "Those guys who started our country all those hundreds of years ago? All the stuff they said back then obviously applies today."

Maybe I'm wrong, cause I can only relate this to Canada and Poland... and in the case of European countries, and China.. and Egypt.. and uhm.. a lot of the rest of the world, "hundreds of years ago" was "over a thousand years ago".. and obviously a thousand years ago everyone was an idiot. I suppose I should only be looking at the western hemisphere here, but yeah.. I don't really even know much about the Canadian founding dudes. I don't think we'd listen to them if they ever came back.

Well, it would depend on a few things:

1. Was Sir John A. really a drunkard in public, or was that just an act he put on to make his political enemies underestimate him?

2. Could they actually manage to be in the same room with each other - including Louis Riel and D'Arcy McGee - and refrain from trying to kill one another?

3. Considering the mess Brian Mulroney, Stephen Harper, and several separatist Quebec premiers have made of things over the past few decades, would they even WANT to come back? I mean, in all this time, we STILL haven't managed to get the flippin' railroad all the way across the country!

Not really. A bit OT but it's pretty simple to name the founding dudes: Mackenzie, Papineau, Cartier, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Tupper, Riel, and Macdonald, and a couple of dozen others that nobody remembers.

It's unfortunate that Louis Riel isn't more widely recognized as a Father of Confederation for his role in forming Manitoba. There was a recent unpleasant kerfuffle among the Tory MPs, when one of them called Riel a "villain"; the Tory MP for St. Boniface was shocked and hurt by that, but the other one wouldn't back down and apologize.

For what it's worth, I think Riel should have proper acknowledgment as a Father of Confederation AND it should be acknowledged that he should not have been hanged.

Unfortunately, it's a bit late for an apology...

 

[Counterclaw]

So I guess the question from the OP is probably why this isn't done with the founding fathers. They had good ideas - but relevant for the times that they were living in. Why should their words count as gospel, when we've had a lot of changes in.. well.. everything?

You make a good point, but I don't think everything becomes irrelevant as it gets older.
If the nature of human beings had changed dramatically, then perhaps I would agree with you, but I don't think that we have changed substantially enough for writings like Federalist 10 not to apply. Humans are still inclined to break into factions. An unchecked majority can and will still trample over minorities. Why would you say their views are irrelevant?

And the fact that he was a professor in Constitutional law in Chicago, and is an Ivy Leauge graduate. Being a graduate and a professor of some of the best law schools in the country no longer makes you an intellectual?

I'm not sure it ever did. It might give some indication that a person might be one. But George W. Bush is also an Ivy League graduate. While, to my knowledge, he was never a professor, he was the president, which ought to be just as good.

Do you consider him an intellectual as well?

 

[Merkinball]

Bah. You might as well say that every person recycles old ideas. I really doubt there are legitimately "new" ideas. Intellectual is more to distinguish, say, a politician who studied and taught Constitutional Law and has a long writing record, including multiple published books.

I've always wondered what it would be like to sit it on a lecture from professor Obama on the constitution... ya know... considering he despises most of it.

 

[holy king]

i hear he follows this ritual where he has to spit on the constitution and then sodomize himself with a statuette of holygeorge washington.

 

[Cutlass]

Are we at CFC intellectuals?

Collectively, or a few individuals? You are. A number of others I could name are not.

 

[Bill3000]

If the nature of human beings had changed dramatically, then perhaps I would agree with you, but I don't think that we have changed substantially enough for writings like Federalist 10 not to apply. Humans are still inclined to break into factions. An unchecked majority can and will still trample over minorities. Why would you say their views are irrelevant?

That's a poor example. Federalist 10 failed spectacularly in its purpose to limit the role of factions. A large republic which elects "fit characters" lol has done nothing to prevent political parties and special interests from being created and flourishing, those factions which Madison believed do significant damage to the fabric of government. The machinery of a republic which can be used to hamper the majority is given to the minority and used against the majority regardless of its factious or nonfactious character.

Saying that Federalist 10 is useful because Madison states that "an unchecked majority can trample over minorities" or "humans are inclined to break into factions" is completely uninteresting; he certainly wasn't the first person to note this.

 

[Cutlass]

I'm not sure it ever did. It might give some indication that a person might be one. But George W. Bush is also an Ivy League graduate. While, to my knowledge, he was never a professor, he was the president, which ought to be just as good.

Do you consider him an intellectual as well?

If your family has enough wealth and influence, you can always graduate from an Ivy League school. That's not proof of anything.

 

[galdre]

If your family has enough wealth and influence, you can always graduate from an Ivy League school. That's not proof of anything.

isn't that the truth! I worked at Harvard for a few years and was amazed at how stupid many of the people there are

 

[warpus]

You make a good point, but I don't think everything becomes irrelevant as it gets older.
If the nature of human beings had changed dramatically, then perhaps I would agree with you, but I don't think that we have changed substantially enough for writings like Federalist 10 not to apply. Humans are still inclined to break into factions. An unchecked majority can and will still trample over minorities. Why would you say their views are irrelevant?

They're certainly not irrelevant, but also certainly not 100% relevant either. Their views were dictated by their circumstances, which have changed significantly.

I have been thinking about this though, on my way to work today. When I was in Chile, I noticed that the Chilean people hold O'Higgins - the leader of their independence movement, in very high regard. Every single town has an O'Higgins street and there are statues of him everywhere - and I do believe he is considered to be a "founding father". This guy lead Chile to independence from Spain in the early 1800s - so roughly within the same time period as the American founding fathers.. a bit later, but not too much.

I never had a conversation with a Chilean about this, but I wouldn't be surprised if Chileans view him as highly as Americans view their founding fathers. Would Chileans quote O'Higgins and claim that his thoughts about the country should apply today? I'm not sure.. But judging by how much they respect the guy - I'd say it's very likely.

So perhaps this is an American (continent) phenomenon. Most countries on this landmass have had an independence movement of some sort in the not too distant past - events that still resonate with the national psyche. So maybe this isn't an American thing - maybe it's a regional thing. (maybe some latin american posters could chime in, or maybe this has already happened, i haven't read a bit of the thread)

 

[ParkCungHee]

I still say the notbale thing in this region is that there wasn't a chile, or a USA, or such, before these figures. In Poland and even Canada, you have your country, and you have someone who came along with a good idea, that people liked, and that formed your modern government, and if that idea ceases to be good, you can give up on it. In America and Chile, we didn't have a nation, we had a guy, or guys, who had a good idea, and we liked it so much we became a nation based around those ideas. So naturally, we hold those ideas to be very relavent.

 

[LucyDuke]

So, like, a National myth-type thing? Every country has them, but not every country still wants those principles applied here. Ours is 1916, but even few die-hard Republicans think that Dev's ideas should be applied here today.

people always try to base their arguments on some authority, but to me anyone who tries to hold up the FF's as an example of how we should live today is, at the least, misguided. After all if we went back to the way the FF's had things we'd get
-slavery
-no rights for women
-no rights for workers
-only white men with a certain amount of wealth would have the right to vote
etc, etc, etc...

like any group of thought, you shouldn't throw it all out - they had some good ideas, but a lot of their ideas were crap and should be thrown in the rubbish bin

Well, no matter how much anyone says it, nobody actually wants to live exactly the way all those dead white guys thought was ideal. They didn't even agree on everything by a long stretch. We generally agree on the big things they agreed on - the stuff that made it into the Constitution. Personally I think Jefferson's vision of America would be an awesome way to live, but most 21st century Americans would probably find it too slow and too quiet. And I wouldn't hesitate to snip the slavery and still represent it as that ideal. We don't aspire to be exactly what they were. But the basic values of rule of law, of individual liberty, of USA #1, of self-governance, those ideas may not have been exclusively theirs, but they certainly had those ideas, and those are the ones that really matter.

(Before I say anything about the Constitution: I'm not a Constitutional scholar. I've read it some times, studied it a bit in high school, studied it a bit on my own, but I make no claim to be an expert. If I mistake anything, let me know.)

On every example galdre gave, it wouldn't be difficult to argue that those issues were incidental. That is, it's not as though disenfranchisement of women was written into the Constitution. It just went without saying, and it wasn't until later that we decided we had to explicitly affirm that women must be allowed to vote. The 3/5 count for slaves and the fugitive slave business was an acknowledgment of slavery, not an endorsement. Nobody ever acknowledged any "rights for workers" before the industrial revolution, more because the concept was foreign than because the founders were unsympathetic.

So while there was a bunch of crap the way they lived, that crap wasn't enshrined. They lived different day-to-day lives than we do, but they didn't prescribe day-to-day life. Jefferson's slaves and Franklin's France fetish can go in the rubbish bin.

And the thing is, our Constitution is pretty intact. We've added more than we've removed. That document is the only thing that really links a 21st century American to giving a crap about anything John Adams thought about anything. Yeah, we change it around a bit sometimes, but for the most part, it's a really good document with a lot of really good ideas. The concern for what the founders wanted is essentially concern for whether we're correctly interpreting the spirit of our government.

For example, I think it's right to invoke the founders in decrying the recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. While one could argue that restricting the "free speech" of a commercial group violates the letter first amendment, it would be harder to argue that it violates the spirit. When you talk about that, you talk about the founders' intent.

As soon as somebody releases an edition of the Bible with amendments that eliminate the unjustified violence, the slavery, and the subjugation of women, as soon as somebody brings that book up to date at all, then maybe a comparison will be worth entertaining. The US Constitution has been adjusted in my lifetime, and a total of four times in my parents' lifetimes. It's absurd to compare it to something as dead as the Bible. We're keeping it current.

What I find particularly ridiculous is the arguments over whether these men were Christians. First, I suspect self-identification as "Christian" meant something very different two hundred years ago, and second, all the arguments that it even matters are incoherent. They agreed, whatever their personal beliefs may have been, that the state would not involve religion. Whether or not they intended a nation based on some notion of "Christian values", which, for the most part, are pretty bland and universal, they clearly did not intend a nation based on Christianity. The first amendment would've been worded differently if they had. Whether James Madison believed in the Trinity or worshiped goats naked down by the river is wholly irrelevant.



...I think that's enough of that.

I've always wondered what it would be like to sit it on a lecture from professor Obama on the constitution... ya know... considering he despises most of it.

Good grief. :rollseyes: Wah wah Bush is a Nazi from the other direction. Let's be adults.

 

[galdre]

I think trying to figure out what they meant the spirit of our govt to be is a waste of time - it's bound to fail, since we view things from a different perspective, and I'm not sure if it's worthwhile even if it wouldn't fail. We should be continually trying to create the nation we want, not the one we think they wanted

and I have a problem with a USA #1 attitude - that's a little to jingoistic for me

 

[Bill3000]

Personally I think Jefferson's vision of America would be an awesome way to live

...you want to live in a 18th century rural utopia?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

...you want to live in a 18th century rural utopia?

zomg Jefferson was a Maoist!

And yes, that would be awesome. Cities suck.

 

[galdre]

And yes, that would be awesome. Cities suck.

can't argue with that

 

[Counterclaw]

That's an interesting suggestion, Warpus. Maybe this is something unique to the Americas. Though, your mention of the link to a revolution makes me wonder if part of the reason some of us find the ideas of our founding fathers so compelling is because they fought so hard to defend them. Many who fought alongside them gave their lives to build a nation rooted in the principles they believed in.

It is because of their struggles that we have our freedom. So we see the founding fathers as more than just legislators. They are also some of our great war heroes and the men responsible for much of the good in our lives.

I think many countries have a love of their military heroes. For the UK, perhaps Winston Churchill fits the bill. Your own revolution was relatively peaceful, and your government has, I believe, changed forms more than once since your nation's birth. So it makes sense that you would not think of your founding fathers or philosophers in the same way many of us think of ours.