Would American forefathers want us to overthrow the government?

Great Debates
1

From CNN

As it has been discussed many times on this board it looks like the US, well Bush Co. , is itiching for a war against Iran. The war against Iraq while demonstrated against still was supported by a majority of Americans. If we go to war against Iraq and lets say 80-90% of Americans were against the war, would our forefathers want us to rebel? And if so, to what extent?

If Washington, Jefferson, etc were alive today what would they think of a government that continues to hunt for wars that havent been proven to be for the safety of the nation? Would they want the people to stand by? Or would they want more?

Now, im not preaching the overthrow of the American government, but I would like to know what other Dopers think the founders would do…if anything.

2

Who cares what they would want? Edmund Burke was full of shit. We owe everything to our descendants but nothing to our ancestors.

3

The founding fathers would have been appalled that we have huge standing professional armed forces, instead of the citizens militia they regarded as the democratic ideal. They would decry that the government had the ability to go to war without the overwhelming support of the populace. Granted they couldn’t have forseen tank warfare, aircraft or nuclear missiles, but they would have regarded our modern armed services as a legion waiting for an emperor to come along.

4

Why? I forgot the part of the founders discussion where they say you should rise up to depose a democratically elected leader. I thought that the point was right to representation, not right to overthrow anyone who doesn’t do what you personally like. If anything, I think the founding fathers would probably be concerned about your seeming need to impose your own viewpoint tyrannically over the will of the people who elected the leader tossing us into such a war. I believe that a minority asserting its will over the majority is a form of aristrocracy or oligarchy. I’m pretty sure the founding fathers weren’t aiming for either of those forms of government.

5

Errmm . . . yes, they were, Sly. They would have been appalled at how “democratic” (a term of opprobrium during Washington’s administration) our system has become.

6

Well, I think it bears repeating that the Founding Fathers had diverse views on govenrment that converged on independence, and I’m not sure that there is any one view of today’s government that would carry over to describe all of the Founding Fathers’ views.

George Washington, for example, I believe would be delighted that we have a professional, all-volunteer military during a time of war. (I’m thinking more of the war on Al Qaeda; I’m more inclined to say he would not have liked the foreign entanglement of Iraq) Let us recall that, as CINC of the Contenental Army, he pleaded time and again for the establishment of a standing army because the militias were getting routed on the battlefield, and the Continental Congress turned him down many times.

I’m sure Hamilton would like to see the incredible strengthening of the presidency that has happened since Teddy Roosevelt’s time; and I’m pretty sure Jefferson would decry the declining power of Congress. There are many questions that I just have no clue about, such as how they’d view America’s role as a superpower, the size of the bureaucracy, whether they’d prefer Xbox to Playstation 2, and so on.

But in terms of how an invasion of Iran would be viewed by the Founding Fathers, I say that there is nothing at all to suggest that they would advocate revolution because of a war in a foreign place. I can’t disagree with **Lumpy{/b] strongly enough about them “decrying the ability of the government to go to war without the overwhelming support of the populace.” That is pure poppycock. They executed a war for independence that had the support of just a fraction of the “American” people, and they wrote the Constitution that says that Congress can declare war by majority vote.

I’d say that if we invaded Iran to the dismay of the majority of Americans, the Founding Fathers would hope that the people would take to the ballot boxes and vote the warmongers out.

7

Actually, they generally regarded the citizen militia as a republican ideal.

While i wouldn’t adopt BrainGlutton’s rhetoric, i tend to agree with the general proposition that spending a whole bunch of time worrying about what the founders “would have wanted” is, in many ways, a rather pointless exercise.

And i don’t say this as an anti-intellectual, or as someone who believes that we can’t learn from history. Hell, my own field of study and (hopefully) future employment is American intellectual history, and i’m teaching a class this semester on exactly that topic. In fact, the class is about to spend the next month examining republican enlightenment, the Revolution, and the debates over the Constitution. I think that understanding the issues involved in these events, and the arguments made by various protagonists, is extremely helpful in understanding the formation of this nation, and also in understanding some of the principles underlying many of the issues currently being debated in America. But i think that trying to second-guess what the founders would have done, faced with the vastly different historical circumstances under which we operate today, is often a rather counter-productive exercise.

Firstly, the “founders” did not constitute a single, monolithic group. There was much disagreement over many issues, both before the Revolution and after, and the documents handed down to us from those times represent compromises between competing interests and ideals, rather than unanimity.

Secondly, many of the individuals involved were able to hold what might seem to us rather contradictory positions. They were not always consistent in their ideals and their applications. Jefferson’s anxiety about slavery, as revealed in his own writings and his own actions, is a good example of this ambivalence. Many of these people were great thinkers and admirable statesmen, but they were not perfect, nor free from contradiction.

And even if they were, the simple fact is that we are faced with situations which they could not have foreseen. And while the courts and the legislature often have to try and guess how best to interpret old documents in light of new circumstances, we should not give in to the hubris of believing that we can actually know what the authors of those documents would have done in our situation.

There was an article in Harpers a while back which essentially complained that Americans spend too much time venerating the nation’s founders without really attempting to understand them in all their complexity and their human imperfection, and without being willing to acknowledge that they may not always be the best guides for our own political decisions. I think that’s a good point to bear in mind.

8

You are missing the point. I am fully aware of the structuring based on a Roman republic model, and the desire to avoid a tyranny of the majority. At the same time, it is my viewpoint that the founding fathers would have advocated revolt when a government popularly elected by a majority in accordance with the consitution makes a decision that you don’t like as an individual.

In the end, they may not have advocated pure democracy (obviously, because we do not have one, we have a representative republic). They clearly did not advocate sedition due to a belief of the minority that the government’s policies were wrongheaded (response to Whiskey Rebellion, etc.). It was still about representation, though you may quibble about the form.

9

Um, have you actually read the constitution?

If the president really did invade Iran (he hasn’t), and 80-90% of the country opposed it (they don’t), and congress didn’t approve it (they probably wouldn’t, given the 80-90% above), and congress didn’t fund it, but the president did it any way, and congress impeached him, but he ignored the impeachment ruling, and the military supported the rogue president instead of the constitution, and we had a Bush dictatorship, then yes, we should overthrow “the government”, meaning the Bush dictatorship, and restore constitutional government.

Somehow I don’t think that’s what is going to happen. Tell you what. Call me when it does. Until then, could you explain exactly why you felt the need to post this backdoor endorsement of violent overthrow of the current government?

10

Jesus, relax will ya?

I don’t see any “backdoor endorsement of violent overthrow of the current government.” The OP is nothing more than a hypothetical, the sort of thing we discuss in GD all the time.

11

Yeah, but hypotheticals are the kind of loose talk that liberals use to undermine the President’s authority, and we have to nip that kind of insurrection in the bud. Nip. It.

12

wow…stop watching 24! Im not out to “get” anyone. and thanks Fear, made me laugh!

13

:confused: Based on your earlier post I thought that was the exact opposite of your viewpoint. Or did you simply forget to type the word “not”? (I sometimes do.)

14

You got it. There was a “not” intended for that sentence that did not make it in. :slight_smile:

15

Wait, so the OP wasn’t really trying to say that if Thomas Jefferson were alive today he’d probably be so upset with the Bush administration that he’d be driving trucks full of fertillizer into federal buildings?

OK, fine, I can play that game too.

If the evil robot zombies in BushCo engage in hideously unpopular and disasterous actions, they can be thrown out of office without armed overthrow of the government. We have a constitution that renders such speculation pointless. We know what the writers of the constitution would advocate, since they wrote the consitutional mechanisms whereby we can prevent such a dictatorship.

16

No they can’t, Lemur. We don’t have a parliamentary system, there’s no such thing as a vote of no confidence. Bush and Co are in the saddle until 2009. The only remedy that might be invoked before that time is impeachment, which can only be used if a majority of the H of R decides Bush has done something that constitutes a “high crime or misdemeanor” as (un)defined by the Constitution, and if the Senate tries and convicts him; and, of course, both houses are controlled by the Pubs, at least until 2007. And impeaching Bush would just put another Pub in the White House – Cheney, or somebody further down the line of succession. I see little to choose between them. So, short of revolution, we’re pretty much stuck with the status quo.

17

In the bud, Andy! In the bud!

18

There’s also the 2006 mid term elections, and if 80 to 90 percent of the American people became disgusted with Bush’s policies, they could elect a Congress that could stop or even reverse Bush’s most objectionable policies. A president would be rendered nearly completely powerless if Congress passes bills that reverse his policies by overriding vetos.

Tired of the tax cuts? It just takes 2/3 of Congress to raise taxes to high hell. Hate foreign adventures? It just takes 2/3 of Congress to stop any or all funding for the war.

The president is not a king (yet), and I bet all of the Founding Fathers would be pleased about that.

19

I’m with **Lemur **on this one. And, contrary to what **BG **thinks, I have no doubts that even a Republican controlled Congress would impeach the president for starting a war not authorized by Congress. There is simply no way the Congress would give that authorization if 80% of the population was against it.

20

Ah, so in our new hypothetical, all house and senate republicans are evil robot zombies too. I gotcha. And the good human congressional democrats are therefore powerless. Well, perhaps the good human democrats in the Senate could muster up a little filibuster action? You know, shut down government like the evil robot zombie republicans tried to do with Clin-ton? Except instead of roughly 40% of the country who supported the evil robot zombie republicans then, the good human democrats would have 80-90% of the country supporting them.

I suppose that perhaps a few of the evil robot zombie republicans would PRETEND to be human, just to, you know, fool the American People into voting for them in the next election. After all, to destroy America from within, they have to be elected to office, right? But if they can’t even pretend to be human (what with all the moaning for braaaaaains…) then all the good human democrats have to do is hold on until the 2006 elections, when the American People can vote out each and every evil robot zombie congressbeing.

The government would be shut down, but perhaps the evil robot zombie republicans would still be able to cause mischief. Then I would suggest a short program of civil disobedience, at least until the 2006 midterm elections. You know, soldiers refusing orders to massacre peaceful protestors, CIA agents refusing orders to assassinate leaders of the human opposition, police refusing orders to round up non-whites and send them to slave-labor camps, things of that sort. Still no need for armed resistance, in the sense of driving trucks filled with fertilizer into federal buildings.