Is obsessing over what the founding fathers wanted stupid?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yes, very muchso. Now did they write up a great system for government for the time? Of course. But that was over 200 years ago, and the idea that everything today should be decided on the basis of back then, including stuff that wasn't even imaginable is beyond silly. Not to mention the design was for a far, far smaller country.

The US is really the only country that has people that think like this too. Can you imagine someone in the UK arguing something shouldn't be passed because some 18th century Prime Minister wouldn't have supported it? How can people seriously say things like "The founding fathers didn't intend for the government to expand internet access so it shouldn't be done!" with a straight face?

[Obnoxiously Slutty Girly Girl]

No.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Nope, never.

There may be a lot wrong in the U.S., but most of what's good is based upon their blueprint.

[Free Trade is managed by the invisible hand.]

obsessing about anything too much is stupid. The Founding fathers are fun to read and stuff, but people should stop confusing their Philosophical views with Libertarianism, Strict constitutional construction and so forth.

[opebo]

They're dead and gone and we've got a new crop of rich bastards ruling over us - the system owes something to those old timers, but really, not as much as people seem to believe.  After all, the whole point of the thing is that individual members of the ruling class are not essential to its dominance.

[John Dibble]

Obsessing over it is. They had very good ideas for men of their time but they weren't perfect. When interpreting the Constitution it's valid to look at their ideas given that they are the ones who wrote it and thusly their interpretations of it are closest to what it was intended to mean. For instance while the First Amendment doesn't explicitly mention the separation of church and state we can see in the writings of Jefferson and others as well as similar laws of the day that it was part of the intention.

That's not to say we should care about their opinion on everything - many were slave owners and had no qualms with it (some of them that did might have but they still owned slaves) and I think none of us here would agree with them on that institution.

[TheGreatOne]

Yes.  There are a several refuges people seek when they have lost the argument: God, the constitution, and sympathy.  Both partys use the constitution when it serves them.   

[k-onmmunist]

Nope. I support liberties being protected. Sorry and all.

[Brittain33]

It's the only thing that all of us as Americans are expected to agree on, in principle. We need one common element.

[useful idiot]

Like has been said before, obsessing over anything is bad, by definition.

If we are a country that is going to be ruled by the Constitution, then we need to know what the Founding Fathers thought, and their intentions. Otherwise we might as well just throw the Constitution out, because a certain large segment of this country seems to think that they can just interpret it however they wish, using it to fit whatever political position they might be pushing. If the interpretation of the Constitution changes based on the political positions of whomever is doing the interpreting, then it's completely useless.

[John Dibble]

Nope. I support liberties being protected. Sorry and all.

Liberties like the liberty to own slaves?

[k-onmmunist]

Nope. I support liberties being protected. Sorry and all.

Liberties like the liberty to own slaves?

No. Like the liberty to freedom of speech, assembly etc.

[John Dibble]

Nope. I support liberties being protected. Sorry and all.

Liberties like the liberty to own slaves?

No. Like the liberty to freedom of speech, assembly etc.

If we're obsessing over what they wanted then we take the good with the bad.

[Bo]

No, the U.S. needs a framework after all. This framework should be modified, of course, but there are some things where we at least need to see the perspective from which the founders designed them.

[MSG]

Without getting into the obsession over the word obsession did the founding fathers not write the constitution as a "living" document to be modified as the times deem?  Hence the ability to amend the constitution and to pass the laws the reflect the times we live in. Its been awhile since i took gov/civ in high school but i recall being taught this. Now in our con law classes we discuss this idea, however i do recall this concept being tantamount in our discussion in that class as well. 

So if we are going to "obsess" about the intentions of the founding fathers why is this part of their intentions so rarely discussed.  My only conclusion is that its not the intentions of the founding fathers that people desire to follow but their own interpretations of the Constitution.  So, lets be frank we need to look at the reasons and intentions of the people who desire to use this concept. While also looking at why they need to use this idea as their fall back positions.  For if their ideas were so widely accepted they would not need to look to anything else but their own arguments. In my opinion they want cover for their beliefs and what is better cover than saying the founding fathers disagree.  Basically stating if you dont agree with me and the founding fathers you are some how less American and therefore your opinions matter less. 

[Free Palestine]

Believing that they had the right idea is not obsessing.  And the fact that they lived two hundred years ago doesn't make them any less relevant.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

'Stupid' is a much kinder word than I would use.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Can we continue the discussion and pretend the word "obsessing" was just a colorful adjective, not truly obsessing every second about it?

[Brittain33]

'Stupid' is a much kinder word than I would use.

I'm going only by the shape of your avatar, but consider what government in various European countries would be like if you didn't have an agreement to a common national or religious identity, only a civic identity. What would that look like? As of now, the answer is either Yugoslavia or Belgium, and neither is a model for stability. At best you end up with a few privileged nationalities and a reduced place for others (as in Switz.) and a reliance on a royal family. The SNP is stronger than any secessionist movement in the U.S.

I'm absolutely not Europe-bashing, although I see that what I wrote above looks like it. This is a way for me to illustrate a way that America truly is exceptional. Despite being very nationalistic, our American nation is not legally defined by its language, only traditionally so, nor is it defined by a religion, as much as it is currently defined by its religiosity, and we've really lost any sense of being defined by a common national origin, because we've never had it. All that we do have to define being American is our Constitution and, less so, our common history. Americans fight like devils over our disagreements about what it means to be an American, the role of our common language, the place of a dominant form of Christianity, and the role of race. Ostensibly the Constitution is all we have that is above dispute at a basic level.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Believing that they had the right idea is not obsessing.  And the fact that they lived two hundred years ago doesn't make them any less relevant.

It does make what they wrote about the internet entirely irrelevant.

[Torie]

The intent of the Founders is one factor taken into account in connection with the legal interpretation by the courts of the text of the U.S. Constitution. So yes, at least for that purpose, it is quite important. Other than that, to the extent  their point of view (or one or more of them) as to various matters upon review is deemed by one to contain some wisdom from which one can take guidance, it is certainly important for that purpose as well.

[Free Palestine]

Believing that they had the right idea is not obsessing.  And the fact that they lived two hundred years ago doesn't make them any less relevant.

It does make what they wrote about the internet entirely irrelevant.

So just because they didn't have cars, airplanes, or the Internet, everything they said about representative government is entirely irrelevant?  You have to be retarded to not see how silly that argument is.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

No, my point is what they had to say about things involving cars, airplanes or the internet is completely irrelevant. "The Founding Fathers never wanted government to provide internet!" is a bitingly stupid argument.

[Free Palestine]

No, my point is what they had to say about things involving cars, airplanes or the internet is completely irrelevant. "The Founding Fathers never wanted government to provide internet!" is a bitingly stupid argument.

The Founding Fathers (most of them, anyways) wanted a federal government that was small, with strict limits on it's power.  It doesn't take a stretch of the imagination, to assume that they would have opposed the federal government providing Internet.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

'Stupid' is a much kinder word than I would use.

I'm going only by the shape of your avatar, but consider what government in various European countries would be like if you didn't have an agreement to a common national or religious identity, only a civic identity. What would that look like? As of now, the answer is either Yugoslavia or Belgium, and neither is a model for stability. At best you end up with a few privileged nationalities and a reduced place for others (as in Switz.) and a reliance on a royal family. The SNP is stronger than any secessionist movement in the U.S.

I'm absolutely not Europe-bashing, although I see that what I wrote above looks like it. This is a way for me to illustrate a way that America truly is exceptional. Despite being very nationalistic, our American nation is not legally defined by its language, only traditionally so, nor is it defined by a religion, as much as it is currently defined by its religiosity, and we've really lost any sense of being defined by a common national origin, because we've never had it. All that we do have to define being American is our Constitution and, less so, our common history. Americans fight like devils over our disagreements about what it means to be an American, the role of our common language, the place of a dominant form of Christianity, and the role of race. Ostensibly the Constitution is all we have that is above dispute at a basic level.

Irrelevance. Promoting Mythohistory for the purposes of national/state identity (or arguably any collective identity - though that leaves us with the question: what history is not mythohistory?) is a bad idea. The distortion of this fluff has on political discourse on in America is simply frightening. And yes I am a Euro which for your information came from a country who in the first 40-50 years of independence promoted a similiar version of mythohistory and teleological 'identity' nonsense which had disasterous intellectual consequences.

EDIT: As for the SNP... you do realize how absurd that comparsion is?