I don't give a flying fuck what the Forefathers wanted. Why would we let a bunch of dead sexist slave owners decide the kind of country we want to live in?
@inventor@jackcole I certainly don't think they were all bad at all, I'm fascinated by history, but I'm tired of it being used as an excuse to maintain the status quo
@inventor@jackcole Yep, I decided long ago it was a bad idea to have heroes, people are flawed, doesn't mean they can't accomplish good things, but they are.
Say what you want about how times have changed; they at least acknowledged that times would change. THEY knew that they were not the be-all and end-all, even if their idolaters don't.
And I'll tell you one I like: There are three co-equal branches of government. Ever since John Marshall, chief justice of the SCOTUS asserted that SCOTUS could strike down laws, SCOTUS has become the government without branches. He did this in an irrelevant case. No one every meaningfully pushed back. So no matter what the Congress or Executive do, SCOTUS can always over rule. Laws and EOs only exist if SCOTUS approves. There are no branches.
@nuncio@RickiTarr SCOTUS regularly ignores the "well-regulated militia" part. In the 1700s version of such militia, weapons were kept in an armory until issued for a particular battle. But if SCOTUS insists on the orginalism game, then everyone who wants a gun must only have a black powder, muzzle loader with no rifling, just as our forefathers had.TAkes a few minutes to reload, and there is zip accuracy. But to be faithful to those times ...
@accretionist Right, so even if you delve into history to prove some point, you're gonna have to ignore a whole lot of facts. It's a living document and that's It's intention, always has been. Thanks for this!
@YakyuNightOwl@accretionist@RickiTarr I attended a breakout CLE that he 'taught' with Bryan Garner. Walked out half way through it; had had quite enough of his smirking smugness.
@YakyuNightOwl@RickiTarr@accretionist Umm, we've never had a Native American President, so I guess a lot of people, starting with A. Hamilton, did not know 'their place.'
@wndlb@YakyuNightOwl@accretionist I think they mean in the sense that, they forget where they came from, like Mexican immigrants who vote for Trump. Conservatives will use minorities, women, log cabin Republicans, but they will absolutely not stand behind them in anyway when it comes down to it.
@accretionist
And look who’s the new American pope…Leonard Leo, he of the buying Supreme Court seats for the worst ultra conservative "Catholics" in the U S.
@accretionist@YakyuNightOwl@wndlb@RickiTarr Repugs are masters at getting stupid white people (sometimes POC as well, which i can’t fathom) with no power to believe those “under” them in society are their enemies because they are taking their jobs and/or lazy (simultaneously) when in fact the oligarchs who OWN the Repugs and the Repugs themselves are the stupid people’s REAL enemies.
@accretionist@RickiTarr Funny there's a bit of a paradox in following wisdom from a previous generation that dictates you shouldn't follow wisdom from previous generations. Just an observation.
@accretionist@RickiTarr This is one of my favorite primary texts to teach, and also a clear example of when Jefferson writes something bonkers to Madison, and Madison is like 'you realize this is, from a practical standpoint, insane, right?''
@RickiTarr@accretionist I said Jefferson was 'free-associating' in a prior draft of my post. I think he did this more than most, because he was the most weirdly repressed and deeply hypocritical of the Founders, and that's saying something.
@accretionist@RickiTarr
"We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - also relevant, from the Jefferson Memorial.
@RickiTarr even Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were self aware enough to admit they didn't know what they didn't know. Amendments are a necessity. That's why "the right to bear arms" is not blanket permission for Joey Donuts to play with sophisticated tools of war sans limitations.
@Piousunyn The irony of that is it's literally impossible, it contradicts itself. Also you will never see a Southern Baptist give up ham and cheeseburgers lol
@RickiTarr Why should today's society be dictated by the will of people who lived hundreds of years ago and not by the will of people who will live hundreds of years hence? That's seems so arbitrary.
@braveamateur@RickiTarr
"...Why should today's society be dictated by the will of people who lived hundreds of years ago and not by the will of people who will live hundreds of years hence...?"
Even more hilarious when the rules they made are by people who lived two thousand years ago, and they continue to worship a man who they claim was his own father, and if you drink his blood and telepathically tell him you love him you go to heaven.
@RickiTarr
The men drafting the original Constitution tried to outlaw slavery, but because one vote could veto any Article, Massachusetts was able to keep slavery legal. All the rest voted to outlaw slavery.
It's as if the people on this thread are unaware of the Enlightenment. At least the Founders tried to rid of the US of theocracy and the stinking Divine Right of Kings. We have anti-sexist laws on the books and in the Constitution NOW and they don't help a bit.
@RickiTarr
I just visited the portrait gallery in the Second National Bank, Philadelphia. Got to see a lot of "founders", many painted by Charles Willson Peale. The National Park Service guide stood in front of the portrait of Thomas Jefferson to extoll the abolitionist next to him. Good job! https://www.nps.gov/inde/planyourvisit/secondbankportraitgallery.htm
@RickiTarr We have so many great people to base our society off of. (Hint: It's not old, dead, racist, sexist, misogyinistic, white guys). And yet people keep trying.
@Mundon@RickiTarr In some senses no it isn't, but what about the fundamental 'feelings' and 'beliefs' and 'behaviours'? To my eyes (as an outsider) not that much has changed in some areas.
@RickiTarr Some people are trying to find a reason for their behaviour in the American Forefathers' will... while doing something completely opposite to values behind their decisions
@RickiTarr Because we (as a nation) agreed to do so. The problem is the courts who have co-opted the meaning of plain words for their own creepy devices and those of their financial masters.
@RickiTarr because their gravitas and the cultural traditions surrounding the founding documents are one of the few safeguards we have against someone like trump becoming a full dictator... They might be products of their time but there are people worse than them alive today.
@apalu Agreed, saying people were bad back then is ridiculous. Things were definitely worse for many people, but we have to be continually vigilant, as we've had to learn the hard way.
Real democracy (see UN definition added below by Wikipedia) has never existed in the history of humanity. The ancient Athenian pseudo-democracy only applied to male, privileged, i.e. rich Athenian citizens, but not to women and slaves.
The US founding fathers simply copied this. You have to imagine this: The USA, loud megaphone worldwide for "democracy", is just a misogynistic, racist, capitalist pseudo-democracy, based on federal and state constitutions, i.e. "democracy" for a white, racist, wealthy men's club according to the Athenian model, and which are currently being constantly changed in a fascist manner by the GOP in "red states".
This is the way to autocracy, not to democracy. If the people, Democrats and "blue states" want a 21. century overhaul of the constitutions, what will happen?
@Raven47 Our Constitution is not a "pure" democracy, as Athenian government was, it is (intended and stated) a representative democracy. Two different things.
Everything we say, think and create is historically determined, i.e. the socio-economic conditions at the respective time influence the result, which means, among other things, that a lot of our knowledge was acquired during the patriarchy that has ruled for thousands of years until today.
For example, Darwin was a revolutionary thinker with his theory of evolution, but at the same time he was personally trapped in patriarchal ideas, believing that women were inherently inferior to men.
Compared to the absolute power of a king, ancient Greek "democracy" was of course an important beginning of the democratic idea, but at the same time limited to a small, privileged elite.
We have now reached the 21st century, and the "democratic" countries, especially the USA, should modernize their "democratic" structures, especially ensuring that ALL citizens (women, LGBTQA+ people, races, religions, etc.) have equal rights and that democratic structures also apply in the economy.
This is not only a legitimate demand of all people who are discriminated against, but is now an existential necessity in order to prevent the extinction of humanity. What was once denounced as “extreme left” has now become vital.
I'm just saying maybe the opinions of a bunch of dead, uneducated, toothless farmers who would be baffled by a TV remote, shit in pots, and owned human beings, shouldn't be the sole foundation for how to run a functioning society.
• Only one of the "founding fathers" – George Washington – wasn't college educated
• Most of the signatories to the Constitution went to college as well.
• Similarly, a bit less than half of the signatories had slaves when they signed.
Hope you never end up in a hospital, or you're going to get to find out what shitting in a pot is like.
@RickiTarr A. Yes of course screw 'em, and also B. The irony is they would be horrified by the idea anyone was treating them as oracles. There is nothing more ahistorical to the Founders' intent than 'originalism.'
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