The Founders

First, tonight is a night fit for neither man nor beast.  Over night into this AM, we had 5-6" of snow, followed by drizzle or outright rain all day.  The streets are flooded.  Stepping out of the car in a parking lot, my shoes were covered in cold water.  Now the wind is whipping up, gusts predicted up to 40 or 50 mph.  If it gets cold tonight, the roads will be terrible.  No school?

We hear a lot about "original intent," what the Founders of the US would do with issues popping up today.  I'm not a big believer in a wishy-washy reading of the Constitution to gather its meaning.  The idea of a flexible or living document has some inherent problems. Yet, compare life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries with life in the 20th and 21st.  I'm not sure we can make a comparison, not a valid one.  Life is so very, very different.

How can we possibly know or, at least, suggest "the framer's intent" on current issues?  Of course, there are some fundamental principles upon which we must not waver.  My admiration, as I've noted here many times, for most of the Founders is great.  Other than Lincoln, Washington comes as close to a historical idol as I have.  The brilliance and foresight, the courage and learning/knowledge of these men was practically beyond compare,  Let me repeat from Arthur Schlesinger, Sr, they comprised "the most remarkable generation of public men in the history of the United States or perhaps any other nation."  Yet, do we risk deciding today's issues, at least specific ones, ones unique to the 21st Century, based upon what was experienced two hundred or more years ago?

These men lived in an era that was before automobiles, planes, atomic bombs, heart replacement surgery, computers, cell phones, television and radio.  Women, blacks, and others were, in effect, not only non-citizens, but not people.  They, with the possible exceptions of the minds of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, lived in a world far different from our own, one they couldn't possibly understand or predict.

If they were alive now, that would be a different story.  They would have experience with the modern world.  With their knowledge and brilliance of thought, we'd be fools not to consider what they proposed.  Can we translate 18th Century knowledge, so long ago, to 21st Century problems?  No doubt we can build on the foundation(s) they have given us.  We can admire them and what they accomplished, something that nobody had done before in thousands of years.  We can try to emulate their thinking, the care they put into it.  And we must realize they do have a lot to teach us, if we would only learn.