Our Founding Fathers

I wanted to follow up yesterday’s article with this one on our Founding Fathers.

Our Founding Fathers are often portrayed as a bunch of rich white guys who suppressed women and benefitted, either directly or indirectly, from the slave trade.

Probably, all true

These men were not saints or gods, and we need to stop thinking of them that way. I think we should remember that these flawed, usually entitled, brilliant, fearless, and extremely “human” beings lived in an entirely different time and place then we exist in today and the reason we continue to honor them after nearly two-and-a-half centuries is not necessarily who they were, but what they created.

As I mentioned yesterday, the current state of our republic is very divided and a complete mess, but that is on all of us. Our founding fathers left us the framework of the most balanced, efficient, democratically representative society ever constructed. The greatest genius of our republic is its ability to evolve and adapt to our ever-changing world. That’s why the US Constitution has amendments.

I usually don’t do hypothetical questions or situations but anytime folks say “What would our founding fathers think?”, I give the same response, “Who cares, they are dead” but if you want to use this thinking, they would probably think, “Why the hell aren’t you people fixing this?”, we laid the framework for you, sit down in a room and fix it!

I don’t claim to have all the answers on this, but I do know that trying to figure out what our founding fathers would say or do isn’t going to get us anywhere. We, current day Americans must figure out our course going forward, the framework is there, what’s missing is the hard work and compromise needed to get it done. I recommend you watch this clip from the miniseries John Adams, not every colony wanted to approve the Declaration of Independence but they voted for what they thought was best for the country, something both of our current political parties don’t seem to have the courage to do any longer.