Just put the words “founding fathers” into your Google News search and you’ll get 1,000 results. There seems to be a consensus among those who failed their history classes that the founding fathers were a unified voice that we can reference for any problem—this is not the case. The founding fathers were a diverse group of intellectuals who disagreed on many subjects and lived in a time very separate from today. There are of course good articles and bad articles that reference the desires of the founding fathers, but it’s a practice that needs to end altogether.
The founding fathers involved in writing the Constitution worded it in a purposefully ambiguous way. It was their foresight that they could not possibly write a document that would address every possible problem that could occur hundreds of years into the future. What they did was create a very good outline of what the basic principles of the republic should be. Benjamin Franklin once said that the Constitution will fail due to the inevitable corruption of the people.
If we were actually going to try to follow the lead of the founding fathers, we would be pulled in many contradictory directions. John Adams would have liked to see the United States become a more religious nation, while Thomas Jefferson was just short of being an atheist. Franklin was quoted essentially calling Adams mentally unbalanced.
Adams was against going to foreign wars for any reason, saying America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” He swore to uphold the Constitution, then he violated the first amendment with the Alien and Sedition Acts.
The founding fathers were intelligent and set some fine precedents, but they also set some poor ones. Let’s also keep in mind that the country was less than half the size it is now when they were building on it. This is not to say the Constitution or Declaration of Independence shouldn't be recognized as the documents we base our laws and actions on overall, but we also have to consider modernization and the fact that the founding fathers themselves should not be a group we’re constantly looking for sage advice from.
If we’re going to consider the founding fathers as a group that we really look up to and consider the best people in our nation’s history, then let’s start electing people like them. We have become a nation that would rather pick a president who we would like to share a Budweiser with than a president with intellect, morals and leadership skills. Our nation was founded by the most intelligent guys around—people we would now call snobbish elites in this modern era.
Our country is led by bought and sold corporate representatives who don’t give a damn what you think. When was the last time we came together and changed legislation as a group? The last time I remember such a scenario was when we blocked SOPA from getting passed, and the government only started caring when corporate giants like Google put their hat in the ring.
The truth is that we, not the founding fathers, should be appalled by the state of the union at this point. The solution is not to try and dissect the words of men long dead in a way that helps us make decisions based on what they may have wanted for us, but it is to try to find a way to get back to the kind of culture and understanding of politics the United States had at that time. Until the money is out of politics and elections are based on politicians that actually lead based on what the American population is asking for, we will continue to diverge sharply from that path. You can just look at one of many polls that asked the country what they wanted the government to do, and then compare it to what the politicians actually did. We live in a country of logos and marketing campaigns, and you’ll have a better chance of making a difference in the government if you start a business.
“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”
-Benjamin Franklin