49 out of 50 states disagree with you about Reagan.
It wasnt Nixon and Reagan…
You might want to pick up a basic 8th grade history book - the concept that **government is the problem **in maintaining a free society came from the founding fathers.
They did not originate that idea, and not all of them shared it, both of which your 8th-grade history book should have told you.
Defensible, but probably not his motive. When Ford died, I did a bit of research and found out he was a much closer friend of Nixon’s than the public or press realized at the time Ford was appointed Veep. No doubt there was a quid pro quo.
US History. That’s what we’re talking about here.
And if you want to go back farther, fine, it reinforces the point that it wasnt just doze evil wascally repubwicans.
If the founding fathers were so opposed to governments then why did they found them? This is like saying that the idea that Art is the problem comes from artists.
I really hope that wasnt a serious question.
No, it didn’t. This is just rewriting history to put words in people’s mouths. They didn’t believe in talking points from the 1970s any more than the Democrats of the 1830s were committed to social justice and concerned about income inequality.
Should I start flooding the thread with quotes regarding government by the founders?
Distrust in government is why they decided to write rules to keep it in it’s proper place.
I would argue they were mistrustful of centralized and unaccountable power (kings), not “government.” And “distrust in government” is not the same as “government is the problem.” Like I said, that’s a talking point from the 1970s. You could argue the talking point reflects a view derived from the founders if you wanted, but that’s different from saying they actually held the same view in the 1780s than Reagan did in the 1970s. I’d also prefer you not “flood the thread” because this is all kind of off-topic.
I’m of the opinion Reagan could be labeled as a liberal by the guidelines the founders intended.
Those rules replaced a set of rules that had established a much weaker, less active gov’t. So its obvious the founders thought that a stronger, more active gov’t, at least compared to that of the Articles of Confederation, was the solution to the problems that they were actually facing circa 1787
Yes, well, the Founders got a lot of things wrong, didn’t they?
It really is amazing to see such stretched perspectives. A person has to actually put effort into twisting their intent.
This guy (Im sure you can find tons more on your own in 10 seconds) has grouped a slew of the founder’s quotes regarding their unequivocal distrust of government spending, power, trust, etc. It’s all there.
You can argue the merits of their mindset (perverse argument as it is) but not their mindset and intent, clearly.
Not THOSE Founding Fathers! They were librul idjit second-gen ACLU-type FFs. We’re talking about First-gen badass gangta no-gummint FFs here! Pay attention!
Or in Newt’s language, they were weak, despicable, sick, perverted pathetic Founding Fathers.
From your cite:
Franklin was a Socialist. Is that what you intended to prove?
Cherry picking isn’t helpful. (especially when most of the things he says reflect distrust, as in “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic”)
A new thread is better, sorry for the derailment.
Neither is a data dump where you just point to a whole website and say, “It’s in there somewhere!”
The point is, your claim that the Founding Fathers were monolithic in their mistrust of government is wrong, which I demonstrated. There are many more quotes that reflect the ambivalence the FF had for government, so you are wrong to claim otherwise.
I’m not going to do cherry picked quotation wars, but was only illustrating to you that Ben’s attitude was anything but nanny state mentality.