On the idolatry of the Founding Fathers:

[underlankers]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

There is a certain strand of politics in the United States that reveres the generation of George Washington as a group of demigods. The

Comments

[notmrgarrison]

"This journal is the collective property of the Superhuman Crew, a group of people that are aware how insane we sound to be saying this sort of thing....and really not that interested in criticism of our insanity. "

What is the point in discussing things with you?

Is your point that the constitution isn't a religious text?
Sounds good to me.

That the founding fathers were horrible people and we should gut the constitution?
Zzzzzzzz.

[underlankers]

My point is that we owe the Founders' ideas the same respect that they gave them. If they were free to disregard them, we are under no obligation to treat their ideas with more respect than they themselves gave them.

[ledzilla]

Oh, but we are under an obligation, an obligation to do better. Otherwise words are just words. So far we fail too. Why did they have to make it so hard...

[underlankers]

Rhetoric is always just words, you will almost never find people who will live up to it. If having a silver tongue is all it takes to do good things, then any damn fool who steals someone else's words without acknowledging it can do that. The way I look at it is that what people say means less than what they do.

[underlankers]

Or for the more clear and positive statement-we defend the Constitution and rule of law in themselves, not because of what long-dead people said or did about them or failed to say or do about them. If the USA is rule of law and not of men, then "not of men" must include the men who set up the laws. Otherwise you get a cult, not a political system.

[sandwichwarrior]

Otherwise you get a cult, not a political system.

Isn't that exactly what you are advocating?

Fuck the law it was written by a bunch of assholes anyway?

[underlankers]

No, I'm advocating a basis for respecting the Constitution that's not based on an abstraction that doesn't admit the Founders did *not* follow the laws they themselves designed. Rule of law is a principle, if we root that principle in real people then we can easily use the Founders to justify tyranny. If, however, the principle matters then it transcends them and is not required to focus on them.

The cult is that Washington and company were saintly Gods enlightening mortals with ideas that never failed and immune to human failings and perfectly following their own ideas.

[sandwichwarrior]

You better come out and say it the because all I've gotten from your responses thus far "is we need to respect the constitution in the same manner that the founding fathers did. which according to you is not at all.

[underlankers]

All right, I'll repeat myself-we owe the Rule of Law a higher standard as a higher law than what long-dead men did with it. The principle is beyond its inventors.