Quote (Goomshill @ May 5 2020 02:31pm)
Without the benefit of modern understanding of game theory and the dynamics of competitive systems, they created a government with well constructed checks and balances to compromise between every series of pitfalls, between tyrannical democracies and unrepresentative republics, between slow and deliberative legislative bodies and the decisiveness of a single leader, between the need for an evolving system of laws and governance and a set of inviolate rights and guarantees. You're using an absolutist moral relativist lens to squint suspiciously at the bathwater and ignore the baby. Lets be real, if any founding fathers had proposed enfranchising women, they'd have gotten laughed out of the room. And if they tried to work abolition into their new government, the brawl would have spilled into the streets. Its one thing to talk about the pragmatic incremental change that was possible in a contemporary society barring idealist fantasy, but the founding fathers went well beyond that and were responsible for a seismic shift in governance. We have the benefit of seeing democracy all around us, but before the English civil war and French revolution settled upon more incremental reforms when radicals fell, democracy had been extinct for 1600 years- and now the refined form of American democracy has rubbed off on and shaped half the planet.
the system of checks and balances was their master stroke. im not arguing that in the least.
what im saying is that the system they created of democracy was essentially no different than what they had learned from the Brits. It was pay to play faux representation where only land owners even had the ability to really vote and be represented. that doesn't mean they failed, it was all they could do given the mentality and society of the time. my point isn't that they could have done better, its that the modern perspective that they created real representative democracy is false, they instead laid the ground work for it and created a system where that could come to be. i'd further say this was not what they intended. we cant have our cake and eat it to. we cant suggest they were bound by the mentality of their day and also maintain they wanted to transition over a few hundred years to a place where all citizens high and low received real representation. of course they didn't want or even predict that. and that's fine. my beef isn't with the founding fathers, its with idiots who falsely imply they were heros because of what we have. they were heroic for what they did, and nothing more.
and we should also recognize that "the founding fathers" weren't a drum circle of peace pipe smoking bros. they were a deeply divided set of men who couldn't agree on how much power the local, state, and federal systems should hold. what roles each should have. etc. Jefferson vs Hamilton is forgotten because they all signed a big piece of paper. even though these disagreements rippled throughout the system for decades to come.
lastly as a bit of an aside, this falls into my greater gripe of lost history. we have pre-revolution history in a dark era, as if the founding fathers were the start of American history. then we have a dead zone where the war of 1812 is a small footnote until the civil war. even the civil war lacks context because Abolitionism is confined to the spur of the moment pen stroke of Abe Lincoln. as if the civil war itself wasn't the result of decades on decades of failure of state and federal govt. the failed compromises, etc. the Spanish American war is hardly a known event, WW1 was dwarfed by WW2. etc. we've mount rushmore'd our own history, lightspeed benchmark approaches to a 300 year rich catalog where perhaps 10 presidents even have their deeds known.
Quote (EndlessSky @ May 5 2020 09:18pm)
Lol. What a joke of an opinion. All of their lives were legendary honestly. They would put any of us to shame in their accomplishments from start to finish
im glad u bit on that lol.
This post was edited by thesnipa on May 5 2020 08:32pm