It’s only mind-numbingly simple if you have a numb mind. I contend that if the Founding Fathers could see us now they would conclude that the Constitution that replaced the Articles of Confederation went overboard 180 degrees the opposite direction. They would either drastically cut back the power of the federal government, explicitly add a score of “yes we mean it” clauses to the Bill of Rights, or possibly decide that the Articles of Confederation were the lesser of two evils. If the whole point of the Revolution was to free the country from an overbearing “do what you’re told, you goddamn peasants” government, they would almost certainly conclude based on our country today that they had failed.
This. They were highly intelligent men with an incredible philosophical bent but they are also products of their time and their views on what is acceptable governance is not necessarily relevant to modern needs.
But then we reach a second problem: how to change the framework when the time is right.
These highly intelligent men with their incredible philosophical bent left us a document that was able to be amended. And we did that: when it became clear that slavery was no longer the will of the nation, we passed the Thirteenth Amendment. When it became clear that we needed to tax individual incomes, and the Constitution forbid it, the Sixteenth Amendment was pass – in each case, by two-thirds majority of Congress and three-fourths majority of state legislatures.
That’s the kind of change that is consistent with our notion of self-governance. WE, the PEOPLE, are sovereign, and we decide through our elected representatives to amend the Constitution.
Yes, I took high school civics, thank you. I don’t think anyone here is not aware of the amendment process. As near as I can tell, the discussion, such as it is, is what the FF would think of the government today.
I think Ben Franklin would think the internet was awesome, especially the porn.
I doubt the Founding Fathers would be as full of themselves as the Founding Fathers Fetishists think they should be. They’d say cool, the right to vote has flourished, control of government has changed hands peacefully several times, and literacy is nearly universal. They’d be impressed with the technology and medicine and be amazed at US for being able to keep everything together for over 200 years.
I sincerely doubt that they’d be having a cow over gun control or income tax. They were men of their times. Times have changed, and if they were here, they’d recognize that. Contrast that with the Founding Father Fetishists who think that the Universal Truth was etched in stone in 1789.
I’m pretty sure they’d be astonished that we were still using the same Constitution, and with so few amendments at that. They had even provided a means for us to chuck the whole thing and start over if it turned out to be unworkable, just as they were doing with the Articles. Many of them no doubt expected to do just that in their own lifetimes.
Many would be not only astonished but elated that we were now a unified country, with only some leftover rhetoric about states’ rights to drag us back to where they were, back to when one could speak seriously about people’s militias and the right to bear arms and the right not to quarter troops. And, depending on their origins, they’d be astonished but either elated or in despair that we had resolved the slavery problem by ending it. They would not be so astonished that racism was still with us, though.
Perhaps, but I don’t think they’d find fault with the Constitution itself, but rather our interpretation of it.
Most of the Federal over-reach you speak of is in defiance of the Tenth Amendment, and a strict reading of the ennumerated powers (such as the interstate commerce clause), after all. This was the prevailing view until the “switch in time that saved nine” in 1937.
Fortunately, the point of the Revolution was to free the country from an overbearing, unaccountable “do what you’re told” government, so everything is peachy. Not that anyone should give a shit. Would you be upset if you reanimated Galen and he was unhappy with the state of modern medicine?
I would be very interested in hearing what they’d say about the status of things, once they had the chance to live in this society for a decade or so in order to get up to speed. But I wouldn’t give their opinions any more deference than I would the learned folk we have with us today. Keep in mind, they were beginners. We’ve been at this whole thing much longer.
They might rethink the importance of the whole “quartering of troops” thing!
The “switch in time that saved nine” was an abandonment of the “liberty of contract” doctrine, not an expansion of the Commerce Clause. The Lochner-era SCOTUS was mostly striking down state laws, not federal ones; in fact, the Lochner case itself revolved around a state law.
Personally, I think the argument that they put a lot of time and thought into crafting a delicate, yet enduring, framework for government is overblown. The Constitution isn’t a masterpiece of a painting with each facet delicately placed just so; it’s a patchwork of compromise and negotiation made by men of their time. If the Founding Fathers had existed 200 years prior, do you think they would have come up with the same system of government? That seems extraordinarily implausible. Then we should we assume that if they lived 200 years later they would be disappointed with our current system of government?
Surely, their views on how our government works today would be the subject of argument and debate among them – just like they argued and debated 220-odd years ago, but we seem to forget about those disagreements.