Political cures that may be worse than the disease Vol.6: The Founding Fathers

I, for one, am getting a little sick and tired of hearing politicians and pundits describing whatever current legistlation is at hand as "not what our founding fathers intended". In fact, it has bugged the ever living shit out of me ever since the first time I heard it used back when I was in college.

My history professor never followed the book assigned to the course. Instead, he wrote his own study guides. In one of them, without it even being on the topic we were covering, he wrote that the founding fathers wouldn't approve of our country's stance on abortion. The next class period, I just went off on him. That wasn't history he was teaching, he was pushing his beliefs on his students.

My frustration at that phrase stems from one simple philosophy: Why should we care about the opinions of men who lived over 230 years ago? If people feel that their opinions matter so much, then why don't they try to get more funding for time travel research?

We start off simple. Our first trip, we go back to 1944, and tell all the troops on the front lines of World War II that in our time, there are Japanese electronics in every household in America, and that the same company that makes the vehicles the Nazis are driving around will make our luxury vehicles today. Let's see how many of those guys still wanna fight the good fight.

Then, let's go back to talk to Lincoln, and inform him that people in the Republican party are using his name and his achievement of freeing the slaves to whitewash the fact that they want to set civil rights back another fifty years.

If all goes well, we go back to the writing of the constitution and tell them what we have accomplished in 230 years:

We have machines that can prepare entire meals in less than five minutes, and for some people, that's not fast enough.

We have flying machines that are capable of transporting 200 people from New York to Paris, France in less than six hours.

The average life expectancy is 75 years.

We are able of transplanting organs from one human being to another, allowing the recipient to live another thirty plus years.

We have devices that allow you to contact people from around the globe and talk to them as if they were in the next room.


If you haven't been locked up as a heretic or all of them have died of shock, continue:

Women and non-whites not only are allowed to vote, but they hold political office and run for president.

We have guns that can fire 100 bullets in less than a minute, and the bullets can break through the toughest armor we have available, and people are using the second amendment to justify using these for hunting purposes.

We have created bombs that can reduce entire cities to smoldering rubble in a fraction of a second, and can launch them from hundreds of miles away and they hit their target with pinpoint accuracy.

We pay taxes on everything we earn and buy.

Many people in our nation are starving, and some people eat well just to intentionally puke it up afterwards.

England is now our only true ally in world affairs. Everyone else either hates us, pretends to like us, or wants to kill every one of us.


Then, you can ask them about their opinions on how we're doing as a nation.


The next time anyone invokes the founding fathers in a political discussion, please keep the following things in mind:

1. If the topic is the passing of a new law, then that is precisely what the founding fathers had in mind. They put a clause in the Constitution that says, "Hey, feel free to change these things if it is needed!"

2. Try and remember the last time your grandparent(s) gave you their opinion on current affairs. Did you totally agree with them? My grandmother is in her mid-seventies, and she still holds a grudge because my cousin married a Baptist. She'd still be upset that I moved in with my last girlfriend if it hadn't gotten a positive write-up in People magazine! Not that she's out-of-touch or anything, but her opinions do come from a time long since relevant to our times....at least her point of view comes from a time after electricity was harnessed!

3. If it's a question of our moral standing, consider Ben Franklin's son who was born out of wedlock, or Thomas Jefferson's many affairs with his slaves and the children that spawned as a result, or the fact that opium was to the founding fathers what a cocktail is to us today.

4. Think of how insane it is that we are apparently so polarized as a nation, that rather than agree with our fellow man, that we need a judgment call from a dead guy, much less many dead guys!