The vast majority of us recognize that the Constitution was not perfect at the time of its inception, hence the passage of various Amendments over time.
However, if instead of amending the Constitution, you had the opportunity to influence those who wrote it, what would you have said?
I'm not just talking about obvious stuff like slavery or voting rights, because the Founding Fathers wouldn't be very much receptive of those arguments. I'm looking for things that could actually change their minds and lead them to change something (however minor) in the writing of the Constitution.
It could be as simple as clarifying a particular sentence's language, or as severe as changing how a core concept is implemented in the structure of the government.
Isaac Backus in 1773:
>“God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.”
Benjamin Franklin in 1780:
> “When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
John Adams in 1787:
> “ The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in [civil] service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”
Thomas Jefferson in 1802 :
>“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”
James Madison in 1822:
> “And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
So there's a popular stance: "The founding fathers only expected people would have muskets, that's why there's a second amendment." Here is why that's crap, or at least let me give an argument that is at best as defendable as the one the mentioned. The founding father's hated tyranny. They wanted a government that was by consent and not by sovereignty. So when people say that the second amendment was not meant to apply to current weapons I call bullshit. The founding fathers wanted the government to not be this powerful entity that people must fear. That means, whatever the government had, the people should have too.
To say that the founding fathers would have limited the second amendment is to say they would have wished the people be crippled before their government.
I really don't know what to say that hasn't already been said. He lived his best life, and brought us cars that led to some of the best RCR videos to date. Truly a shining star in a galaxy of dull brown, he will be missed
Uzi, Thug, Future, Carti
I know this sounds like a stupid question, since the colonists were trying to get help from France. But help wasn't guaranteed, like what if France thought it was too big of a risk. The colonists could've easily been crushed and George Washington and the other Founding Fathers would've been executed over some taxes. What if France thought that the colonists were too weak to even be a bother for their military?
I believe that the way the general public treats the Founding Fathers as these infallible, perfect Übermensch is completely fucked. I can't think of a single other country where certain political figures are as immune to criticism as Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al.
In Germany, similar figures like Bismarck, Adenauer or Kohl are generally seen as complex people, who have done both great and bad things, and are both praised and criticized from all parts of the political spectrum.
Same goes for the UK: Oliver Cromwell, Winston Churchill, and Margaret Thatcher are all respected as some of the greatest Britons of all time, yet you hardly ever see their opinions or politics cited as relevant or important for today's issues.
Even in my small and relatively insignificant country, Hungary, many of the most respected statesmen of the country, such as Lajos Kossuth or Miklós Horthy have been a subject of plenty of criticism, both academic and popular, and their views are hardly ever brought up in the political landscape of today.
Meanwhile, in the US, the supposed leading country of the Free World, statesmen of the past are seen as infallible Übermensch, whose views and political product (the US Constitution) are still seen as the pinnacle of governing, despite all of them being dead for the last ~200 years, during which humanity has progressed more in essentially all fields than it had for a thousand years before the Founding Fathers.
To put things into perspective, during the age of the Founding Fathers,
Slavery was still legal and practiced all across the New World
Only white, land owning men had any sort of political power
The population of the US was around 2.5 million
All the Great Powers of the world were either absolute monarchies, or in the case of the UK, a constitutional monarchy with heavy oligarchical tendencies
The latest technological development in warfare was the rifled musket, with an accurate range of around 200m and a rate of fire of around 1-3RPM
Literacy rate was around 50% for men, and around half that for women
Life expectancy was around 35-45 years
Welfare, social security, worker's rights, healthcare were straight up not a thing
How on Earth could anyone believe that the world these people lived in was in any way, shape, or form similar to the world of today? Sure, some of their ideas have stood the test of time, such as freedom of speech, religion, and press, but others have been made obsolete, and should be discard
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