Quote:
Originally Posted by f3lix
I'd prefer to go back further to the founders, which wanted to get us away from an oppressive government (which I feel we are getting quite close to.)
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The amount of hero worship the founders get is overdone. They've practically been deified.
Most of their ideas on liberty and popular sovereignty were taken from Locke and the British government. A lot of them were hypocrites when it came to all men being created equal and slavery. People act as though they boldly declared independence, and that the constitution was practically beamed down from heaven. The fact is is that the founders were very torn on breaking away from England. The Boston Tea Party had nothing to do with being overtaxed and everything to do with taxation without
representation. They wanted to be citizens, not subjects, and they wanted the Brits to actually follow through with their own constitution.
Our constitution is a great foundation, but there are amendments for a reason - that reason being the people who wrote it existed in a time when there were no radios, airplanes, antibiotics or railroads. Evolution hadn't been discovered. Medical science was non-existent.
You get the idea.
Our constitution still calls blacks equal to 3/5ths of a person. The third amendment prohibits the quartering of soldiers in your home during peace time. The second amendment was put into place largely as a defense against a future British invasion. I mean you want to talk about archaic - do you think if the US military turned on the citizens of this country we'd stand a chance, because Johnny Fuckwad and Pablo Sanchez are packin' heat?
Let's examine the supreme court of those days, shall we?
1856, Dred Scott vs Sandford: When a slave petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court for his freedom, the Court ruled against him--also ruling that the Bill of Rights didn't apply to African Americans.
1883, Pace vs Alabama: In 1883 Alabama, interracial marriage meant two to seven years' hard labor in a state penitentiary.
And this is decades after the declaration of independence!
My point is the same point I make about people who hold the Bible sacred because they think people back then were somehow purer, more reasonable or had more wisdom. It's bullshit. Anyone who studies history can see that for every progressive, free thinker there were 100 regressive, close minded assholes looking out for number one. It's dangerous and delusional to look back at the past as some idealistic time when folks were just and common sense prevailed.