The Founding Fathers: Why the veneration?

[Albion]

Not just the women, but slaves, freed slaves, Native Americans, and anyone else who was not a WASP male.

As we can see, the premise of the OP is incorrect. Or at least we can say that it is not universally accepted as correct that Americans lionize the founding fathers.

For many people, it's chic to be negative wherever possible, and especially so when speaking of one's own country.

 

[JustOneWay]

Also, the Bible is not a political document as some may assert. The New Testament is about freedom from the bonds of sin and destruction. As St. Paul wrote:

Then how come so many republican politicians use it as a basis for the laws they want?

 

[redleghunter]

If people were truthful they would admit that the founding fathers were educated man and only a few of them were even mildly religious even though the everyday man in the street was afraid of religion.

They tried to set up a Utopia where everyone was free to do what they wanted regardless of anyone else and free to live life as they pleased, a winner takes all society where people step over others to get to the top.

Religion came to the front because of that and made everyone pay, it was a type of Mafia long before the Sicilians ever set foot on American soil because religion was doing it long before the Mafia was though of.
The Mafia was born out of religion, the idea was simple...... You don't have to believe (pay) but you know what will happen if you don't, the choice is yours, either believe (pay) or suffer the consequences but please remember, no one is forcing you to believe (pay) the choice must always be yours.

America has turned out to be the exact opposite to what the founding fathers intended it to be, religion and greed has eaten away at the very heart of the society, if ever there was a case for 'anarchy' America is the case, the only thing that will save American society is to destroy it and start again, religion and greed are too deeply ingrained in the American psyche to change the way of thinking, every time something good is proposed Americans ask 'what's in it for me' and the idea dies.

So the 'mildly religious' educated founding fathers condoned slavery, and encouraged a 'winner takes all society.'

Wow even secular atheists back then were destroying society.

Oh, and the 'mafia' word is a root which most believe comes from Arabic. They spent some time in Sicily like every other conquering nation in the Med.

 

[redleghunter]

Then how come so many republican politicians use it as a basis for the laws they want?

Which laws?

 

[Albion]

If people were truthful they would admit that the founding fathers were educated man and only a few of them were even mildly religious even though the everyday man in the street was afraid of religion.

This isn't true.

Most of the founding fathers would be considered deeply religious by today's standards, or at least deeply concerned about religious matters. Many did not favor an established church or conventional theologies, however. But that's a different matter.

They tried to set up a Utopia where everyone was free to do what they wanted regardless of anyone else and free to live life as they pleased, a winner takes all society where people step over others to get to the top.

In fact, they did the opposite by striving for a balance between individual freedom and social order.

 

[JustOneWay]

Which laws?

For starters, a Constitutional Amendment banning same sex marriage.

 

[redleghunter]

Many conservatives do more than look to the founders for original intent, they believe that their intent is of a superior wisdom than any modern thinking can possibly be, regardless of the clear limitations in their wisdom at the time.

Not superior of wisdom but wisdom itself which is timeless. More accurately sound wisdom.

They kept the principles of Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness very basic. They failed to end slavery which shows they are quite fallible humans. So yes we must not look to them as 'gods' but they did create the best of government and law to protect individual freedoms and what they thought as 'failsafe' separation of powers between Executive (king), Legislative (law giver) and Judicial (justice).

However they could not put into law that mankind can screw it all up. They knew their limitations as John Adams wrote:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. (Notes for an oration at Braintree (Spring 1772)) (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams)

John Adams was big on liberty but concerned reference the moral deprivation of mankind. Interesting insight into one of his personal letters:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, They may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies. (Letter to Zabdiel Adams (21 June 1776)) (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Adams)

So IMO, some do go back to look at what these people who set things up in the first place (founders) had to say and why. Getting to know the people outside of just the written law is important...at least to me.

 

[Nithavela]

Well, we can see that you come at this with a completely open and inquiring mind, can't we?

Do you think that anything of the sentence bolded by you is wrong?

 

[redleghunter]

The problem is like how folks in america are with their bibles. everyone has their own interpretation of what those ideals are.

Well think of our three branches of government as the established 'hermeneutics' of the Constitution.

There's no problem with the Constitution (in most cases) but if the hermeneutics are bad and not based on the original intent (exegesis) then problems arise.

Same with the Bible. If the hermeneutics or theological approach are flawed to begin with, then we get bad doctrine and theology.

 

[Albion]

The problem is like how folks in america are with their bibles. everyone has their own interpretation of what those ideals are.

Which is why the genius of the founding fathers is often commented on. They provided a means by which society can work out, in an orderly way, conflicts between individual rights and community needs.

 

[redleghunter]

Slavery, genocide, racism, discrimination, and white supremacy? I can believe that. This nation certainly was not founded on the perpetuated lies of freedom or liberty and justice for all. It was rather hypocritical and deceiving of the "founding fathers" to insist that all men are created equal when they owned other human beings as slaves.

Yes, your above comments would be what is called eisegesis of the founding.

To accurately assess the founders and the Constitution we must look at them in the light of the 18th century with powerful European continent influence starting in the 15th century. This shaped their early culture and philosophies.

From the memoires we have of the signers of the DoI and Constitution, most of our founders did not own slaves. A good number of those who owned them freed them. From our 21st Century perspective the one's who did engage in the slave trade and owned slaves are clearly wrong by all accounts of morality in the Western world...Christian and Jewish too.

 

[One Voice Among Many1]

They tried to set up a Utopia where everyone was free to do what they wanted regardless of anyone else and free to live life as they pleased, a winner takes all society where people step over others to get to the top.

No, only for WASP males. This did not apply to women, blacks, Native Americans or anyone else who was not a WASP male. And the WASP male certainly did take all and stepped over everyone else to get to the top - from stealing tribal lands, to forced removals and the death marches (the Trial of Tears and others), to broken treaty after broken treaty, then to murdering and slaughtering countless Indians (men, women and children) to get the land and natural resources he wanted. The invasion of the WASP male on tribal lands has been compared to a horde of locust, devouring and destroying everything in his path and it has been compared to the leech, sucking the very life's blood out of the land he attaches himself to. The undeniable truth of this country is that no matter where you live here, you are living on occupied land that either Native Americans were forcibly removed from or murdered for. And that is the history many good Christians and other Americans do not want to remember or be reminded of.

 

[JustOneWay]

No, only for WASP males. This did not apply to women, blacks, Native Americans or anyone else who was not a WASP male. And the WASP male certainly did take all and stepped over everyone else to get to the top - from stealing tribal lands, to forced removals and the death marches (the Trial of Tears and others), to broken treaty after broken treaty, then to murdering and slaughtering countless Indians (men, women and children) to get the land and natural resources he wanted. The invasion of the WASP male on tribal lands has been compared to a horde of locust, devouring and destroying everything in his path and it has also compared to the leech, sucking the very life's blood out of the land he attaches himself to. The undeniable truth of this country is that no matter where you live here, you are living on occupied land that either Native Americans were forcibly removed from or murdered for. And that is the history many good Christians and other Americans do not want to remember or be reminded of.

American Exceptionalism....

 

[redleghunter]

Indeed.


All men are created equal....

but those women should know their place two steps behind men.

The Founding Fathers.

Actually they meant all mankind. As 'men' back then and in their loftier language meant the human race.

Yes, indeed I believe without women there would never have been a DoI and revolution! Is there anything a more ancient man would not do for the woman he loves? Even go toe to toe with despots?

 

[GoldenBoy89]

And they seemed to know that, too, which is why they set up a system where we could change things as needed. The Constitution isn't, and has never been, set in stone.

-- A2SG, heck, they amended it only a couple years later.....

The greatest thing these men ever did was create a government that can grow and bend with the society it represents to avoid becoming outdated and irrelevant. Of course, you have to change the document from time to time to match the current society but that is what the it was designed to do. Our constitution never would have lasted as long as it has, had we not made the 27 amendments we've already made to the original document. If we need more, then so be it.

 

[Nithavela]

Yes, indeed I believe without women there would never have been a DoI and revolution! Is there anything a more ancient man would not do for the woman he loves? Even go toe to toe with despots?

That's right, women make awesome moral support to make men do something.

 

[Cute Tink]

The Founding Fathers established some good principles, but they were not without their flaws.

Judging them by 21st century standards may not be necessarily fair, but that doesn't mean they cannot be judged as having embraced things that they should have known were just wrong.

 

[Albion]

The Founding Fathers established some good principles, but they were not without their flaws.

Judging them by 21st century standards may not be necessarily fair, but that doesn't mean they cannot be judged as having embraced things that they should have known were just wrong.

That's always so easy for people of our own times to say.

Surely we can say that they should have known that, for example, theft or murder were wrong--and that's because of both the religious and political standards of society--but when it comes to most of the rest that people talk about, it's not so.

 

[Cute Tink]

Is that the "forgive them, for they know not what they do" approach?

 

[Albion]

Is that the "forgive them, for they know not what they do" approach?

No.