# If the Founding Fathers could see us now **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 20, 2012, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640 "2012-12-20T17:21:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/21 "2012-12-20T18:51:01Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > 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. Actually i think what gets forgotten is that they actually reached agreement at all. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/22 "2012-12-20T18:55:46Z")
> [@Kearsen](#): > > Actually i think what gets forgotten is that they actually reached agreement at all. Huh? I think just the formulation of the question – that the Founding Fathers would have a unified view of today’s government – implies that they all might agree on what the US has become. It took almost three months of debate to design the Constitution, but I think it’s more common to think that it simply sprang forth fully formed from their unanimous, collective heads. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/23 "2012-12-20T19:01:11Z")
> [@Really Not All That Bright](#): > > 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. Yes, but it’s a useful milestone when discussing shifts in what is considered the proper role and powers of the government. That’s the sense in which I intended it. ---
**Author:** ![LawMonkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@LawMonkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LawMonkey)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/24 "2012-12-20T19:04:46Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > 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. Astonished, certainly; elated, not so much. People of the time (and so on until the Civil War or so) tended to think of themselves as Virginians or New Yorkers or whatever first and subjects of the federal government second. ---
**Author:** ![Kearsen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/82dd89/32.png) [@Kearsen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kearsen)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/25 "2012-12-20T19:13:32Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Huh? I think just the formulation of the question – that the Founding Fathers would have a unified view of today’s government – implies that they all might agree on what the US has become. > > It took almost three months of debate to design the Constitution, but I think it’s more common to think that it simply sprang forth fully formed from their unanimous, collective heads. I don’t think that at all. I think that the people arguing that the founding fathers would be appalled at today are very mistaken. If you take them from their place in time and drop them here then you might be correct. However, if they were here the entire time and watched the processes take place and the necessity of some (yes some) of the changes then they would still be as brilliant as they were back then. The fact that they came to a consensus on what they ascribed as the Constitution should be the basis by which all legislation aspires. The legislating of today falls well short. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/26 "2012-12-20T20:04:08Z")
Well, first they’d have to get over the mindblowing concept of being able to drink water from a public fountain and not dying of cholera… ---
**Author:** ![artemis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/91b2a8/32.png) [@artemis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/artemis)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/27 "2012-12-20T20:21:17Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > I sincerely doubt that they’d be having a cow over gun control or income tax. But I do think they’d be having a cow over warrantless wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition, and the President declaring he can unilaterally declare an American citizen on foreign soil a terrorist and have him executed without any judicial review. And I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. They’d hate our huge standing army as well, along with our country’s propensity to meddle in conflicts all across the globe. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/28 "2012-12-20T20:28:16Z")
> [@artemis](#): > > I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. What was better about the late 18th century in that regard? Or _ever_? The delegates to the Constitutional Convention were all pretty wealthy men themselves, with power derived from that wealth. They even made \*voting \*available only to wealthy white men. They might be appalled at the ability of “those people” to put a non-wealthy non-white non-man into office, though. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/29 "2012-12-20T20:32:29Z")
> [@artemis](#): > > But I do think they’d be having a cow over warrantless wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition, and the President declaring he can unilaterally declare an American citizen on foreign soil a terrorist and have him executed without any judicial review. And I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. They’d hate our huge standing army as well, along with our country’s propensity to meddle in conflicts all across the globe. Probably true, not not necessarily. For all of Jefferson’s reputation for liberty and limited government, he did play kind of fast and loose with his reputed principles (and perhaps the law) when it came to the Louisiana Purchase. For all the idealism they embodied, they were also pragmatists who sometimes didn’t let rules stand in their way. I mean, the whole Constitutional Convention was thought to be to fix the Articles of Confederation, and there they go creating a new type of government entirely. That’s pragmatism! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/30 "2012-12-20T20:40:09Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I contend that if the Founding Fathers could see us now they would . . . . . . include Alexander Hamilton (whose memorial should stand in the place of Thomas Jefferson’s). **His** plan for a new constitution to replace the AoC looked like [this:](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(United_States)#Hamilton.27s_Plan) > [@](#): > > Unsatisfied with the New Jersey Plan and the Virginia Plan, Alexander Hamilton proposed his own plan. It also was known as the British Plan, because of its resemblance to the British system of strong centralized government.[66] In his plan, Hamilton advocated virtually doing away with state sovereignty and consolidating the states into a single nation.[66] The plan featured a bicameral legislature, the lower house elected by the people for three years. The upper house would be elected by electors chosen by the people and would serve for life.[66] The plan also gave the Governor, an executive elected by electors for a life-term of service, an absolute veto over bills.[66] State governors would be appointed by the national legislature,[66] and the national legislature had veto power over any state legislation.[66] ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/31 "2012-12-20T21:15:15Z")
> [@artemis](#): > > But I do think they’d be having a cow over warrantless wiretapping, and extraordinary rendition, and the President declaring he can unilaterally declare an American citizen on foreign soil a terrorist and have him executed without any judicial review. And I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. They’d hate our huge standing army as well, along with our country’s propensity to meddle in conflicts all across the globe. Adams signed the Alien and Sedition act so he wasn’t above short-cutting the bill of rights if it suited him. And Washington put down the whiskey rebellion toot sweet so they weren’t exactly uniformly opposed to taxes either. I think the founding fathers would be flabbergasted at the way they are deified today. They knew themselves as a squabbling bunch of rogues who ended up putting together a document which satisfied no one but was the best they could do under the circumstances. To see themselves and their political opponents portrayed as a unified set of philosopher kings inspired by god would have them rolling on the floor laughing. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/32 "2012-12-20T21:30:41Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Huh? I think just the formulation of the question – that the Founding Fathers would have a unified view of today’s government – implies that they all might agree on what the US has become. I think the ones who were deeply doubtful about giving the federal government more power would be vindicated, and the federalists who insisted that those concerns were paranoid and would never come to pass would be flatly shown wrong. As soon as I can pull the AntiFederalist- Federalist cites I’ll post them here. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/33 "2012-12-20T21:51:11Z")
I think privately they were pessimistic about this diverse yet unified democratic experiment from the outset and would be blow away that what they founded is the worlds only remaining Super Power. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/34 "2012-12-20T21:58:28Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > I think the ones who were deeply doubtful about giving the federal government more power would be vindicated, and the federalists who insisted that those concerns were paranoid and would never come to pass would be flatly shown wrong. As soon as I can pull the AntiFederalist- Federalist cites I’ll post them here. If the Founding Fathers could see the world today, all of it, and its history from their day to the present, then they would see, and even the “doubtful” ones would be forced to acknowledge, that a minarchist/decentralized state **does not work** under post-Industrial-Revolution conditions. Look around the world, after all, at all the countries where things in general go as well as or better than in the U.S.: One thing you won’t find in **any** of them is minimal government. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/35 "2012-12-20T21:58:52Z")
> [@artemis](#): > > And I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. The folks who only considered land owners eligible for voting ? Yeah, I’m sure they’re be horrified by the concept of an oligarchy… > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > They might be appalled at the ability of “those people” to put a non-wealthy non-white non-man into office, though. Obama is plenty wealthy, though. Not Rmoney wealthy perhaps, but Obama didn’t grow up in a trailer park either. According to [this quick and dirty google cite](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9268807/President-Barack-Obama-has-1-million-account-with-JPMorgan-personal-wealth-of-up-to-10-million.html), his personal assets are estimated anywhere between $2.6 and $10 million ballpark. Ever so slightly above average 😛 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_stamos_left_ear/32/3198_2.png) [@John\_Stamos\_Left\_Ear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Stamos_Left_Ear)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/36 "2012-12-20T22:02:48Z")
The issue here to me is breathtakingly simple: People get out of the founding fathers what they want. The founding fathers are like Gods and the Constitution (and extra-Constitutional writings) are like the Bible. And people often use them to confirm their personal biases rather than the other way around. Don’t feel badly, though. Antonin Scalia is just as guilty of it as I am as are most of the posters in this thread, so we’re in good company. That said, there are cases where one can look at a modern day situation and come up with a comparable situation that the founding fathers dealt with and the passage of time and cultural drift allow for a less murky determination. For example, let’s look at the OP’s assertion that the founding fathers would align themselves with RON PAUL and the “state’s rights” crowd and shake their heads at how unruly the federal government had become and how it usurped so many rights and decision that they would have naturally felt belonged with the states. In this case and others, we don’t have to suddenly put these wise men in the completely foreign world where a person with black skin would not only not be a slave, but would be elected President, let alone see how they wrestle with the idea of same sex marriage. We don’t have to put them in a situation where we can have legitimate debate, such as the gun situation where you can make as much a case that the founding fathers might see the hows and whys of power of guns and come to a different determination than they did years ago, or maybe that they wouldn’t. However, for the RON PAUL types, the fact is that _they already tried this_. It was their USA 1.0. It was bug-ridden and however noble their motives might have been, [they saw that in reality](http://americanhistory.about.com/od/governmentandpolitics/f/articles_of_confederation_fails.htm), it led to states arguing amongst themselves. It led to states refusing to financially support the national government. The national government was powerless to enforce any acts it did pass. Some states began making agreements with foreign governments. Most had their own military. Each state printed its own money. There was no stable economy. And it led to Shays’ Rebellion - a violent outburst as a protest to rising debt and economic chaos where the national government was unable to gather a combined military force amongst the states to help put down the rebellion. So they scrapped the idea and went with USA 2.0. Which has more or less been the law of the land for a couple hundred years, exponentially more time than the Articles Of The Confederation managed before those same founding fathers admitted that it was insufficient. The founding fathers don’t have to be put in some hypothetical time machine to see if they can figure out how a dozen or so states with autonomy was a nightmare to deal with. They dealt with it. And they scrapped the idea. Yet the states rights people like RON PAUL and the OP think that they would see three times as many more territories with competing interest and want to go back to the failed experiment of 250 or so years before? So yeah, people instill their own biases into these kinds of discussions. But it seems difficult for me to understand how even the most earnest states rights folks can ascribe their views to the founding fathers when it already failed under their own watch, no time machines needed. When some will completely ignore something as important and obvious as the failure of the Articles of the Confederation and come to the cockamamie conclusion that the founding fathers would be on your side - even when they already tried it your way and it was a dismal failure - shows that some are quite willing to suspend logic in the name of Dogma. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/37 "2012-12-20T22:06:06Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > 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. I think they would be pretty appalled that the government has almost entirely been co-opted by corporate interests. If anyone is worried about the overbearing power of a central government, they should then be gravely worried about the overbearing power of a central government where corporations, and not the people per se, are the ones holding the reins of power. Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I don’t think this issue was even close to being on their horizon as a possible threat to the kind of democracy they envisioned. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/38 "2012-12-20T22:29:31Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > I think they would be pretty appalled that the government has almost entirely been co-opted by corporate interests. After, of course, a lengthy explanation of what “corporate interests” are, and how they differ from the interests of merchants in newly-independent America. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/39 "2012-12-20T22:32:07Z")
> [@artemis](#): > > And I think they’d be appalled at the degree of influence money has over our political system. > [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > What was better about the late 18th century in that regard? Absence of any need for a candidate/politician to buy expensive television advertising in order to remain electorally relevant. I’m sure they spent money on newspaper ads, but TV time is of a whole different order of magnitude. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640/40 "2012-12-20T22:35:37Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > 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. BTW, **Lumpy,** what does it matter? I’m sure you know the FFs weren’t right about everything anyway. Just because **they** might view our present system as a bad idea, does not mean that it is. And, we, today, do not owe the FFs any duties, to respect their judgment or follow in their path or anything else; that would be Burkean bullshit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-founding-fathers-could-see-us-now/644640.md?page=3)