They rejected kings and were sincerely concerned about the possibility of a dictatorship. But we need to move past founder-worship and focus on justice.
They rejected kings and were sincerely concerned about the possibility of a dictatorship. But we need to move past founder-worship and focus on justice.
If you read Washington’s Farewell Address, the section where he warns about the dangers of party politics sounds to a modern ear like he is talking specifically about Trump.
Did he and his founding father co-authors have uncanny foresight? The truth is simpler than that. They lived their lives up to that point under oppressive authoritarian rulers.
They were describing the evils they knew from experience. The reason it sounds like Trump to us is that he’s the evil we know from experience.
They read a lot of history, particularly the english civil war, the roman civil wars. They were aware of the limitations of democracy and the vulnerability to demagogues, but they still thought it was superior to monarchy, “if you can keep it”.
Maybe, but the Founding Fathers were kind of naive when it came to how the politics of the system they designed would play out. The Constitution is an imperfect document written by imperfect people who didn’t understand that political parties would form or what positions the political opposition should take.
That being said, the Founding Fathers thought there would likely be a new constitution within a lifetime.
The founding fathers can’t really be spoken about as if they’re one person. They disagreed with each other just like you’d expect. Some were probably more naive than others.
At least some of the founding fathers did understand political parties and that they would form. Some of them were against political parties, yes, especially George Washington, but the first American political parties were established during Washington’s tenure as president. Everybody knew it would happen, but many of them tried their best to stop political party formation. That’s why Washington talked about it in his farewell address that I mentioned.
The idea that the founding fathers believed a new constitution would come within a lifetime is just a misconception as far as I can tell. One founding father, Thomas Jefferson wrote about how a constitution lasts 19 years, and would only last longer due to force. But I don’t think any of the founding fathers, even Jefferson, really believed we’d have a new constitution within that time. In fact, when that time limit expired, Jefferson himself was the sitting president. Did he really think he was only president due to his use of force at that time? I suspect not.
And it took over 5 years for all of the states to ratify the constitution that they came up with. I think a person experiencing this would feel in their bones that Constitutions were expected to last a long time.
Isn’t the US constitution the first written constitution in the world? (besides the 10 commandments, if that counts) It may look outdated today, but it was a great legal innovation at the time and influenced world history up to today.
It depends on how you look at the Articles of Confederation, another American basic law which was replaced by the Constitution.
Also, it isn’t me saying that the Constitution wasn’t a big deal. It is just me pushing against the deification of the document.
Yes, I agree that it should not be taken as dogma, but there is some value in having some good faith well though out cross-generational legal inertia that evolves slowly with culture and technological developments over time…which would be the job of SCOTUS.