The Founding Fathers were not good people

Truth. It’s a worldwide problem.

Another anti Biden thread.

Name another country where the rich don’t have everyone by the balls.

It’s human nature. Democracy at least tries to make it a little more fair.

R2

Not true at all. I voted for Biden. The Republicans are a lot worse than the Democrats. We all see what’s happening across the country.

However, several Democrats are part of the problem. We just saw some Democrats side with Big Pharma on drug pricing, and shut down change Americans need. And that is only one example.

I went out with a guy who wouldn’t stop talking about his love for the Founding Fathers and colonial history, but he had a very childlike, Disney-fied view of it all. Like the people who tour a plantation but object to hearing about the enslaved people who lived there. I don’t understand the resistance to accepting how brilliant some of their governing moves were AND how filthy evil some of them were in many ways.

R3

Why can’t I strive for my country to do better? This “democracy” in America is not fair at all. Have you been paying attention to anything?

Don't you go talking bad about the Founding Daddies.

Better sit down, son. Let me tell you something.

The really good people--the ones who are hard working, honest, good friends, partners and parents--are never the ones who get famous.

R8: “But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

I guess if they are all bad people, we should move to Europe where they believe in electricity.

It’s not like we have to give the Declaration of Independence back if we acknowledge that Thomas Jefferson was a douchebag.

No, they were not all bad people. They were complicated and flawed people, of their time, who were trying to build something. Ever heard the expression about cracking a few eggs in order to make an omelette.

It’s crazy how much you guys venerate the words of some 18th century dudes in periwigs. The world has moved on.

People are people. Things aren't going to really ever change. There are some segments of humanity that prefer to be led and some segments that prefer to lead. You can see this in children playing on a playground.

Not all of them OP

Fuck off, OP. You obviously failed U.S. History 101.

They weren't good people because they had money? I don't agree. Would you rather have a bunch of poor uneducated idiots trying to form a nation?

Is OP another Chinese troll sockpuppet?

The Constitution and what it represents is one of the greatest achievements of humankind. Go live in another country and you will understand.

The biggest innovation of the Founding Fathers was building in space for the documents they wrote to stay flexible as times changed. I don’t think they would care that much if we called them foul-smelling, wooden-toothed slavemongers.

Yes, Virginia. The Founding Fathers were not good people. But back then, people were sensible and rational, understood that humans are fallible and imperfect. The demand for absolute perfection is a disease of the 21st century, one that is rotting the soul of the US.

Oh, ffs, grow up. The great leaders and founders anywhere were usually not nice people because they wielded huge power.

You weld cultures together by striking a balance between admiration and reality.

From Caesar to Henry II to Peter the Great, they all sucked as people, but still managed to bring about huge changes that moved history forward.

It was never about "niceness".

Jesus, sometimes I think the threads on this stuff are opened by teens who've watched too many Marvel films and think Washington should really have been like Odin the All Father.

Grow up.

Okay, seriously, does anyone believe they are forced to worship the Founding Fathers these days? Who? Where?

The truth is for whatever flaws they had, they set up a system that does NOT require us to worship the rich and live in fear that somewhere somehow a billionaire is being overtaxed.

That shit is on us. It really is. It can change at any time we want it to, but it will take a lot more of us to break that stupid spell, which really comes more from the Gilded Age than the Founders.

I don't get it. The only people I know who spend all day "founding" things are hoboes rooting through the trash.

Ben Franklin seems chill af.

They came together and created the most free country on earth. Not too shabby. In a time where freedom was not the norm.

They screwed the pooch with the electoral college. That was a ticking time bomb leading to minority rule. Maybe they couldn’t foresee that 3/4 of the states would be populated entirely with ignorant hicks.

[quote]Would you rather have a bunch of poor uneducated idiots trying to form a nation?

Pretty sure that was the ultimate objective of January 6, which is hilarious and pitiful.

Their country would look like a WalMart

The Founders/Framers were brilliant, flawed men. They were representative of their time. To judge them by the standards of today is ridiculous.

R30

But they were judged by some of their peers by modern ethical standards. Peers who alerted them that their stances were not compatible with democracy.

Some judging by our times is inevitable r30, as they would judge medieval kings and popes and peasants by their times. We should do our best to understand them in the context of their times, but deciding, yeah, in some ways their times were really fucked up and so were they is not such a terrible conclusion.

[quote] Ever heard the expression about cracking a few eggs in order to make an omelette.

No.

Back home we never had to break eggs. We had a chicken who laid scrambled eggs. We would put a bucket underneath and bring it into Mom.

I could never figure out why my father was so upset with that chicken though.

They were products of their times.

I don’t remember in 1776 that China, or Japan or Persia or the Ottoman Empire were going around saying - We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Or any of the empires before 1776.

Let's play DL jeopardy. These two war criminals stated "We're not going to let a centuries old piece of paper tell us what we can and cannot do!"

“I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery,”

[quote] We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

My, that’s lovely. Did you write that?

[quote] The biggest innovation of the Founding Fathers was building in space for the documents they wrote to stay flexible as times changed

According to so-called Originalism, the Constitution should not be interpreted beyond the context of the time in which it was written. The greatest irony of that theory, is that it is in of itself a modern re-interpretation. Per Originalism, many of our amendments beyond the Bill of Rights should be deemed unconstitutional as the founders never imagined anything beyond the world of their times, and thus, those centuries-old words can't be reasonably interpreted to apply to contexts a century or two later without re-writing the constitution itself.

Wasn’t Scalia like that?

[quote] most free country on earth.

I really don’t think you can say that about the US considering factors like the rate of incarceration, the poverty gap etc. etc.

The original Bill of Rights (the first ten) were passed almost immediately as a remedy for some oversights in the Constitution. They were ratified by 3/4ths of the states in 1791 and thus became the law of the land.

Other Amendments were passed later.

I sometimes think it would have been better if we had not won the Revolutionary War. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833, so maybe we would have avoided the Civil War and the Southern arrested development that was spawned by a slave-based agricultural economy.

America would have emerged as a great power in any event and its split from Britain would have come around gradually. It may have turned out to be a much better America than what we have now.

It was such a different time though. In the beginning, the people who came here were religious freaks and most were farmers. No electricity. People mostly only read the bible if they could read at all. We were a primitive nation and slavery predates the country. Black slaves were here before the country was formed. Black slaves were brought here in 1619 before the first pilgrims landed in Jamestown. We always talk about black slaves, but all women were basically slaves too. No one ever talks about that.

What the NIMROD OP can't fathom is that the founding fathers were ruling class men of the mid 18th century. Morality was different then. But no, OP wants to cancel them with hindsight 250 years later because they were bad mean men who only represented white men.

LOCK ‘EM UP!

And what is the excuse now? Rich white men still rule everything and yet we can vote and change things and we don't bother. It seems we prefer to complain than to do anything to change anything. We prefer to play the victim.

They were flawed geniuses. Fuck off, Op.

Losing elections one woke cancellation at a time.

The only perfect person was Jesus Christ, op.

he was meh, r50

I think maybe they just aren't relevant now, no other Country seems to go on and on about 18th Century Politicians/Leaders as much as the US.

If you asked most Brits who Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was they probably think he the hero in a Jane Austen book, and he was more recent.

The past is foreign country; they do things differently there.

They were the genisis of the greatest country in the world, name another country where people clamour to get in. GROW UP OP

[quote] I sometimes think it would have been better if we had not won the Revolutionary War.

One huge problem with that thought is that France would never have sold the Louisiana Territory to England so the western boundary of this country would be the Mississippi River and we would be less than half the country that we now are.

“You’re half the man I married!”

The Founding fathers HATED organized religion. They will always be Great Americans because of this.

This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it. - John Adams

The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy. - George Washington

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. - Thomas Jefferson

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. - Thomas Paine

I have this advice to anyone who doesn't like this country: MOVE. Go to another country that you think would be better. Just fucking move.

[quote]One huge problem with that thought is that France would never have sold the Louisiana Territory to England so the western boundary of this country would be the Mississippi River and we would be less than half the country that we now are.

By problem do you mean bonus? That relentless westward expansion killed upward of over 130 million indigenous people.

R58 = Judge Judy.

“A-move!!”

[quote] killed upward of over 130 million indigenous people.

They obviously weren’t that smart, much less indigenous.

R44 All women were not slaves. Please. What kind of white feminist bullshit is that? And 40% of slaveowners in the US were white female and were just as cruel and heinous as white men.

R58 girl advocating for improvement is crucial - you’re so stupid lol.

[quote] killed upward of over 130 million indigenous people.

[quote] They obviously weren’t that smart, much less indigenous.

It's also a pretty neat trick for 130 million of them to be killed considering the estimated population of native peoples in the regions that would become the United States is estimated at between 10 million to 2 million in the 17th century.

[quote] killed upward of over 130 million indigenous people.

From the below link. [quote] there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60 million people.

Did they kill them all twice? R59 whether it was England, France or Spain, some European power was going to move into those areas, the indigenous people were just too backward. Unfortunately few people cared about the indigenous people. Without the whole United States, Fascist Nazi Germany and Japan would most likely have taken over the world eventually, killing even more people.

R65 lol it’s funny when people use a theoretical Japanese to positively spin the genocide of the native Americans.