Founding Fathers Challenge

This week, the Unpaid Punditry Corps challenge is:

How do you think the founding fathers would decide on the hot button issues of today?

Personally,I feel the US Founding Fathers were all pretty liberal for their time. None believed in the divine right of Kings, all believed in democracy (as long as the voters were all rich white men), and let's not forget many were senior Masons and big fans of the Enlightenment. Washington grew dope and Franklin was a member of the hedonistic Hellfire Club while he was in Europe.

If they were around today, they would be way out there on the fringes of the liberal wing of politics. What would nowadays be called "moonbats".

However, this question also sounded like it was right up the street of the freethinkers at the Daily Grail so I put it to them and got a couple of veryinteresting responses.

I think they believed more in the rights of the individual, as opposed to any particular system of government (such as democracy). Remember that there wasn't a democratic government anywhere at the time. They founded a state that derives its authority from its citizens, and from the citizen's god-given rights. Some of them were less inclusive than others when it came to counting the citizens.

I am sure they would oppose the Patriot act, and they would applaud instruments for free speech.

They would insist on the right to keep and bear arms, for the purpose of overthrowing the government, should that be necessary.

They would advocate going to the moon and to Titan :)

Perhaps they would get me a deal on getting back all the taxes I paid living in the US while not having representation? I could use the money.
Earthling.

Considering the current US government's attempts to gradually erode the most precious tenets of the constitution, I believe they would attempt to rally the population and start another civil war/coup d-etat against the corrupt regime.

I'm sure there are other issues which they would frown about or welcome, but I'm having a sandwich at the moment and I can't concentrate on the two things at the same time.

yer ol' pal,
Xibalba

I think there would be quite a lot of amusement/disbelief at the creation of this myth of the United States being founded in Christianity. Paine was positively agressive against Christianity, Franklin was a deist, Jefferson didn't believe in the 'miraculous' portions of the bible commentary, and the evidence points to Washington being a deist as well.

I wonder how Frist and Paine would get on...
;)
Greg

The Founding Fathers are currently smiling that knowing smile and saying, "Yes, everything appears to going as planned."

"The ink was hardly dry on the Constitution before the planned takeover of America’s higher education was implemented. By the mid-1960’s the invisible government had total control of all education in our company. The plan was to stifle scientific knowledge and then twist what was left to fit the science they wanted the people to believe. They accomplished this by adopting new rules in regards to scientific research. As F.L. Borshke reported in The Unexplained: The Unknown World in Which We Live (1975)

Even Yale administrators recognize the power of that institution. George Wilson Pierson wrote in 'Yale College' (1952): “The power of the place remains unmistakable. Yale was organized; Yale inspired a loyalty in its sons that was conspicuous and impressive; Yale men in after life made such records that the suspicion was that even there they were working for each other. In short, Yale was exasperatingly and mysteriously successful. You rival institutions and to academic reformers there was something irritating and disquieting about old Yale College.”

We see the truth everyday (thanks in part to the great news posts on TDG), yet we are loath to accept it because the life of an ostrich appears less stressful.
Anon

As I said, freethinkers...