This Fourth of July, Let's Stop Worrying What the Founders Would Think

[one...two...tree 2,762]

This Independence Day, as we're drinking and stuffing our faces to commemorate the founding of our nation, let's take a moment to reflect on just how tumultuous the Revolutionary period really was.

History bears little resemblance to the cartoonish view of the birth of the nation that most people hold. Our forefathers didn't just wake up one morning, declare "no taxation without representation!" and then wait for Paul Revere to tell them it's on. It was a period of 30 years of internal struggle to define what this new country might look like, and the notion that there were some immutable principles on which everyone agreed is entirely wrong.

In her book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History, Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard, writes: “Beginning even before it was over, the Revolution has been put to wildly varying political purposes.” Between 1761, when the first signs of discontent with England became apparent in the Colonies, and 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Lepore explains that leading Americans debated an “ocean of ideas” from which “you can fish anything out.”

Indeed, ever since the last of those revolutionaries we've come to call the “Founding Fathers” shuffled off this mortal coil, Americans from across the political spectrum have claimed to be continuing on in their tradition. Saying the Founders would be standing firmly behind one's ideological preferences – or that they'd be rolling over in their graves contemplating one's opponents' – is a rich tradition in American politics. Back in the 1820s, Andrew Jackson's Democratic Republicans insisted they were the true Constitutionalists, as did the Whigs they opposed. Both sides of the Civil War made the claim, as did civil rights crusaders and Southern segregationists.

The Tea Partiers are obviously the latest in this long tradition. Lepore found that their “view of American history bore almost no resemblance” to the one she studies and teaches. “What was curious about the Tea Party's revolution,” she writes, “was that it wasn't just kooky history, it was anti-history.”

Conservatives tend to swear an almost religious allegiance to the Constitution, but as I've written before, their “originalism” is simply a crutch used to avoid making substantive arguments – an appeal to the Founders, which have come to be the highest authorities in America after God. Almost everything on their ideological wish-list is justified by vague references to that great document.

This can seem pretty comical at times. Last year, for example, Think Progress reported that “one radical conservative has declared yet another common public good to be unconstitutional: bike paths.” Rep Duncan Hunter, R-California, told an interviewer he didn’t “think biking should fall under the federal purview of what the transportation committee is there for. If a state wants to do it, or local municipality, they can do whatever they want to.” The punchline came when he was asked if he's “OK with mandating highways?” Hunter's response: “Absolutely, yeah. Because that’s in the Constitution. I don’t see riding a bike the same as driving a car or flying an airplane.” So airplanes and cars are in the Constitution; bikes, not so much.

The Constitution was a beautiful document, but it was not intended to be a detailed guidebook for governing the country. Lepore writes that “the Founders were not prophets. Nor did they hope to be worshipped. They believed to defer without serious examination to what your forefathers believed is to become a slave of the past.”

Indeed, Lepore notes that it was none other than Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

In Federalist 14, James Madison wondered if it was “not the glory of the people of America, that... they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons or their own experience?”

This gets to the heart of the matter: the Founders were grappling with 18th century problems, and would be bewildered by the debates we're having today. When people say that the Founders, were they to be reanimated today, would be shocked by this or that policy, keep in mind that what would really stun them is indoor plumbing, horseless carriages and flying machines, not to mention all these women and free black people daring to cast votes in our elections.

While conservatives are happy to delude themselves with the belief that the Founders' politics were indistinguishable from Ronald Reagan's, perhaps the rest of us can let them rest in peace. They fought their era's battles and they won. Meanwhile, we've got 21st century problems to deal with.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/151493/this_fourth_of_july%2C_let%27s_stop_worrying_what_the_founders_would_think

[Judyann 0]

This Independence Day, as we're drinking and stuffing our faces to commemorate the founding of our nation, let's take a moment to reflect on just how tumultuous the Revolutionary period really was.

History bears little resemblance to the cartoonish view of the birth of the nation that most people hold. Our forefathers didn't just wake up one morning, declare "no taxation without representation!" and then wait for Paul Revere to tell them it's on. It was a period of 30 years of internal struggle to define what this new country might look like, and the notion that there were some immutable principles on which everyone agreed is entirely wrong.

In her book, The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle Over American History, Jill Lepore, a historian at Harvard, writes: “Beginning even before it was over, the Revolution has been put to wildly varying political purposes.” Between 1761, when the first signs of discontent with England became apparent in the Colonies, and 1791, when the Bill of Rights was ratified, Lepore explains that leading Americans debated an “ocean of ideas” from which “you can fish anything out.”

Indeed, ever since the last of those revolutionaries we've come to call the “Founding Fathers” shuffled off this mortal coil, Americans from across the political spectrum have claimed to be continuing on in their tradition. Saying the Founders would be standing firmly behind one's ideological preferences – or that they'd be rolling over in their graves contemplating one's opponents' – is a rich tradition in American politics. Back in the 1820s, Andrew Jackson's Democratic Republicans insisted they were the true Constitutionalists, as did the Whigs they opposed. Both sides of the Civil War made the claim, as did civil rights crusaders and Southern segregationists.

The Tea Partiers are obviously the latest in this long tradition. Lepore found that their “view of American history bore almost no resemblance” to the one she studies and teaches. “What was curious about the Tea Party's revolution,” she writes, “was that it wasn't just kooky history, it was anti-history.”

Conservatives tend to swear an almost religious allegiance to the Constitution, but as I've written before, their “originalism” is simply a crutch used to avoid making substantive arguments – an appeal to the Founders, which have come to be the highest authorities in America after God. Almost everything on their ideological wish-list is justified by vague references to that great document.

This can seem pretty comical at times. Last year, for example, Think Progress reported that “one radical conservative has declared yet another common public good to be unconstitutional: bike paths.” Rep Duncan Hunter, R-California, told an interviewer he didn’t “think biking should fall under the federal purview of what the transportation committee is there for. If a state wants to do it, or local municipality, they can do whatever they want to.” The punchline came when he was asked if he's “OK with mandating highways?” Hunter's response: “Absolutely, yeah. Because that’s in the Constitution. I don’t see riding a bike the same as driving a car or flying an airplane.” So airplanes and cars are in the Constitution; bikes, not so much.

The Constitution was a beautiful document, but it was not intended to be a detailed guidebook for governing the country. Lepore writes that “the Founders were not prophets. Nor did they hope to be worshipped. They believed to defer without serious examination to what your forefathers believed is to become a slave of the past.”

Indeed, Lepore notes that it was none other than Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human.”

In Federalist 14, James Madison wondered if it was “not the glory of the people of America, that... they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons or their own experience?”

This gets to the heart of the matter: the Founders were grappling with 18th century problems, and would be bewildered by the debates we're having today. When people say that the Founders, were they to be reanimated today, would be shocked by this or that policy, keep in mind that what would really stun them is indoor plumbing, horseless carriages and flying machines, not to mention all these women and free black people daring to cast votes in our elections.

While conservatives are happy to delude themselves with the belief that the Founders' politics were indistinguishable from Ronald Reagan's, perhaps the rest of us can let them rest in peace. They fought their era's battles and they won. Meanwhile, we've got 21st century problems to deal with.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/151493/this_fourth_of_july%2C_let%27s_stop_worrying_what_the_founders_would_think

Great articles: Happy 4th of July to all of us!

[Obama 2012 1,714]

Leave it to you to politicize the 4th of July.

Let me now post something for you STEVEN, and as the most anti-constitution member of those board, maybe you will learn something.

July 4, 1776:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

[slim 1,525]

"one radical conservative..."

That's probably my favorite line of that article. The man is a "radical" because he suggested the federal government shouldn't regulate a bike path. Yes, that's radical. I like how the connection is made to horseless carriages and flying machines being protected but not bicycles.

Have they even read the constitution?

Rep. Hunter is spot-on that the federal government has no business regulating bike paths. None at all. What's radical is thinking the constitution authorizes the federal government to do so.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Why does Steve hate this country so much?

[scandal 951]

Why does Steve hate this country so much?

Why do you hate people who think differently than you do?

In 3 years on this board I've yet to hear Steve say "I hate America" or anything like it.

This country was founded by those who came to its shores when they were persecuted for having different beliefs. Yet you attack a fellow American just because he says things you find distasteful to you. Shame on you.