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February 13, 2010 06:59 PM UTC

Founding Fathers Found

  • 9 Comments
  • by: JO

The Founding Fathers. Sarah Palin seemed to fumble when asked to name all, or any, of them. The intentions of the Founding Fathers are often cited, occasionally on this site and more frequently in discussions among the right-wing, as having written the rules for how we ought to behave in 2010, including most recently the role of the Senate. Just yesterday Dan Quayle insisted that 51-vote majorities were not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

On the eve of his birthday, once upon a time a national holiday on its own, I would nominate another leader/president as a Founding Father of this nation. Most often his two greatest accomplishments are listed as issuing the Emancipation Proclamation and holding together the union. Less often is he regarded as a Founding Father of a new nation.

Abraham Lincoln was confronted by the notion that “sovereign states” that had joined the federation in 1789 and thereafter were free to leave the union if that was the will of the majority of voters in those states. Could that nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal long endure? To assure that it did, Lincoln was willing to launch a conflict that killed one out of 11 men living in what had been the United States during his first term in office.

Eventually Lincoln prevailed. But even as he did, America was already pregnant with a new society, not the nation of free, independent yeomen tilling the soil, but of workers milling the iron into steel; not one not comprised mostly of people who traced their ancestry to the British Isles or West Africa, but of millions who had themselves crossed the Atlantic from Italy and Russia, Hungary and Bulgaria; not a country where wealth was measured in acreage, but one of shares of common stock; a country that was to see yet another revolution sixty years after Lincoln’s death.

Lincoln became president seven decades after the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution. He died seven decades before the Third American Revolution ushered in by Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. In both of these later American revolutions, the excesses and ravages of unrestrained wealth–landowners who claimed ownership of slaves and stockholders whose soaring greed brought their own enterprises to a crashing halt–were necessarily brought under the control of the majority of citizens.

It has been eight decades since the third American revolution. The government is paralyzed by forces that are still fighting against the third revolution, and even by some who would defy the outcome of the second, as if time had stood still at the start of the last decade of the 18th century, or in the middle of the 19th, or in the first third of the 20th.

Might it be that the time is overdue for a fourth revolution, a new Constitutional Convention, to redraw the rules by which we as a nation confront unforeseen challenges in a world that seems, by many accounts, to be passing us by? Should the interests of the select few be allowed to overcome the interests of the many, by virtue of money meant to buy both elections and the finer points of legislation written by officials beholden to their corporate contributors, by virtue of obscure rules adopted to advance the interests of the elected (or appointed) at the expense of the interests of the electors?

These are neither abstract nor theoretical questions. They are on the breakfast table before us this very day, the eve of the anniversary of the birth of Lincoln, Founding Father extraordinaire.  

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9 thoughts on “Founding Fathers Found”

  1. .

    I associate with a few folks who question whether the 16th Amendment, the one concerning income tax, is valid.  They point out that the word “education” does not appear in the Constitution and interpret that to have special significance.  

    Folks here call for neutering the Senate, and might even want to eliminate the House and go with direct Internet voting (pure Democracy) to replace the whole of Article 1.    

    Depending on the mood of the country, a Constitutional Convention could do a lot of damage.  Is there anyone in Congress today that you think would be up to rewriting the Constitution so that it would be improved, besides Ron Paul ?  You can be sure that any such Convention would be filled with the same leeches that are in Congress today.  Not a giant among them.  

    .

    1. That may well be a problem, although I wonder whether–and why–a Constitutional Convention need be limited to the current crop of incumbents.

      But whether there is a constitutional convention or not, the problem is no less serious. Midgets operating under the Constitution are not saved by that document, neither from doing harm nor from failure to solve problems.

      And there is no doubt that the country is sharply divided–and has been for decades–to an extent that the two sides can’t even agree on science (“global warming”) much less how (or even whether) common problems should be addressed.

      Is doing nothing, either on a grand scale or on a small scale, an alternative? Singing the praises of men who lived more than 200 years ago strikes me as whistling in the dark, at best.

      1. .

        most in Congress believe they would make as good or better a President than whoever holds the office. Most believe they are at least the equal of Madison, if not smarter.

        That crowd would make sure that all delegates to any Constitutional Convention came from there.  

        These professional politicians are addicted to power, even if terrified of exercising it, lest they be held responsible for something.  

        If the current Congress was empowered to rewrite the Constitution, I expect that the new document would, first of all, covert their elective posts to lifetime appointments that can be passed on to their children.  

        And that would likely be the most popular of all the changes they would make, going downhill from there.

        I am a student of human nature.  You strike me as plenty smart.  If there’s even one member of the Colorado delegation that you think would make a good, just King, then I question if you study human nature.

        .

        1. …the current Congress convening and staffing a Constitutional Convention. By its very nature, they would have no more claim to seats than anyone else. To the contrary, all bets would be off.

          IF we doubt that we the people circa 2010 are incapable of writing a Constitution, then I would despair. No set of written laws can or will save us from ourselves, or effectively address the problems we confront. My point here and elsewhere is that the current system has become so distorted that it is no longer able to cope.

          We need a blank sheet of paper to begin anew.

          1. .

            how would there be any impetus for a Constitutional Convention ?

            Who would initiate that, and how ?

            Are you counting on the Tea Party to do that ?

            The current status quo, the 2-party gridlock, serves Doug Lamborn pretty well.  He doesn’t have to actually do anything but come back home and rail against Nancy Pelosi.  His only job, and his only concern, is getting reelected.  

            And I think that pretty much describes another of the 534 “representatives” and Senators.  

            If you want change, either revolution or vote against the 2-party lock on power.  It really is up to you.

            .

            1. How to launch a movement for a constitutional convention? Since there’s no precedent of which I’m aware, it’s a good question–to say nothing of replacing the current federal government with one constituted under a new Constitution.

              Some preliminary thoughts:

              1. A Third Party movement with this as its one and only goal–a convention, rather than a particular constitution–could be one way for people to express their general disgust with the federal government. With a general approval rating of Congress–which, I would argue, is the core institution of the federal government–in the 25% range, one might think there would be fertile ground for such a party.

              2. Coopt some state officials into using the existing infrastructure for holding elections; don’t many or most states have provisions for putting resolutions on the ballot by petitioning? I haven’t spent time researching this issue, but such state elections could well establish credibility for the call for a convention.

              3. Whatever convention were assembled, on whatever basis, could well find itself in direct confrontation with the existing federal government. Would that government happily disappear if a new constitution were drafted and adopted by popular acclaim in a series of state referenda? I wouldn’t venture a guess, not knowing the circumstances under which such a constitution were drafted and “adopted.”

              4. Assumiong, for the sake of argument, that existing state governments remained intact, it’s not impossible to imagine states declaring their affiliation with a new federal structure under the new constitution. Shades of the civil war, I know, but past isn’t always precedent. The biggest lever would be citizens paying taxes to the new federal government, not to the old one, and state-chartered banks refusing any “old federal court” order to seize funds on behalf of the federal government. {I could see the nascent “move your money” movement as being one iteration of the discontent I’m referring to, especially if it were directed towards state-chartered banks in particular.]

              But I’m getting far, far ahead of myself. Initially, calls for a new constitutional convention would doubtless be regarded as irrelevant rants from the fringes–until citizens from across the spectrum, right and left, asked “why not?” instead of assuming it was impossible. I’m often struck how often, on this site at least, serious changes are written off as “ridiculous,” “impossible,” “dreamland,” or other words suggesting that mega-changes aren’t really possible, whereas I think the population might be more in the market for a mega-change than for tolerating a continuation of the current deadlock on virtually every single issue.

              Last point: I take your last graf to suggest that a third party, such as the American Constitutional Party, might be a vehicle for the sort of change I’m envisioning. In that particular case, the ACP appears based on a different interpretation of the old Constitution, whereas I’m suggesting that an entirely new structure is needed. My view of a “New Constitution Party” would be purely as an organizing vehicle for the convention, without particular regard to what such a new document should and should not include.

              1. .

                I think the only way something like this gets any traction is a major upheaval.

                Bigger than changing judges on American Idol.  

                I think that the people who benefit from the current system would exert themselves pretty hard to make sure that the gravy train was not interrupted.

                .

                1. On that we agree, certainly.

                  But from the other side, is the halt–and prospective reversal–of the long-standing upwards economic progress of the “middle class,” which characterizes at least the past decade, sufficiently compelling to motivate mass action?

                  Symptoms that it might be: (a) election of Barack Obama as an agent of “hope (for) change”; (b) rise of Sarah Palin as champion of the Tea Party movement. In their separate and distinct ways, these two figures could be viewed as aspects of the same impulse: a widespread dissatisfaction with the political/economic elites, and the institutions they control.

                  In the current debate, discussion is usually segregated into separate topics such as education, environment, health care, ending the war in …., and the economy (further divided into unemployment, deindustrialization, frozen levels of compensation for the great majority).

                  Seldom are all these issues wrapped into a larger discussion of why American society appears to be incapable of getting a handle on any of these problems, each of which is compelling in its own right, much less all of them!

                  1. .

                    I think that the American public should have been outraged over the SCOTUS decision that said corporations could buy elections.

                    Nary a whimper.

                    I was astounded to read in the NYT last week that VP Chaney approved torturing a detainee by slitting his penis with a scalpel.

                    Zero outrage.  

                    I was disgusted to find that the organized “Tea Party” events in Southern Colorado are all sponsored or funded or supported by Dick Armey.  

                    T-Party folks appreciate his generosity.  

                    Karl Marx was right about the function of religion in society.  American Idol now classifies as a cult religion.  Keep the masses quiescent with their opiates, and the ruling class can do whatever they want.

                    .

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