The Founders Would Like to Remind You They've Been Dead for Nearly Two Hundred Years - McSweeney's Internet Tendency
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In the current era of hyper-partisanship, many have taken to using out-of-context quotes by us and asking what we would think of pretty much any political development.
With that in mind, we'd like to remind the American people that we are dead. In fact, we've been dead for nearly two hundred years. We are no longer capable of sentient thought. We feel this can't be stressed enough.
You folks that think having to pay sales tax is an affront to the liberty we fought and died for seem to have forgotten that one of Washington's first acts as president was to send the military to put down a protest against taxes on booze. So bear that in mind next time you're cosplaying us and screaming about having to pay 10 percent on a pack of smokes.
When you all ask yourselves what we would think about the terms of service policies of tech companies, you should really be asking, would we even be able to have the capacity to process what the internet even is? We didn't even have electricity back then. It took George Washington like a month just to travel down to South Carolina for a presidential visit.
The closest thing we had to Twitter was the town crier, and even they were getting their information long after it had initially been published.
By the way, since you now have Google, perhaps take a chance to look up the Sedition Acts, if you really want to know our opinion on free speech.
Now, we get that the bulk of the population is Christian, and you're free to worship as such. But when we founded this country, you have to keep in mind that we were really only allowed to worship at the same church that the King of England belonged to. The same applied to most government jobs. So that's why we included the religious clause, and further confirmed that in the Treaty of Tripoli. Again, check that Google thing you guys are always bitching about.
We recognize that the Constitution is a pretty vaguely worded document, but we thought we made it pretty clear on the whole religious front. It's why we made it the first amendment to the Constitution, for Christ's sake. You can belong to a religion that believes all negative emotions are caused by the spirits of dead aliens and still get elected to Congress. One guy actually did. So if someone wants to take the oath of office on the religious text of their choice (which, reminder, isn't a constitutional requirement), let them.
Also, think about what the United States was when it was founded versus what it is now. We were an agrarian society that lacked indoor plumbing. The population was about 1 percent the size of what it was now, and we had only thirteen states.
Beyond that, what you seem to fail to realize is that when we were doing our thing, we were pretty much making it up as we went along. We were trying to build something resembling a representative democracy in the aftermath of a war that, quite frankly, even we were surprised we won. Additionally, we weren't the first country to try this. Iceland has had a representative government since the tenth century or so.
Yes, we were inspired by documents like the Magna Carta. But when we were drafting the Constitution, we weren't asking, "Is this what Stephen Langton would have done?" or "What would King John think?" with every sentence of the draft. It's one thing to be inspired by us, but we didn't anticipate for you to try and emulate everything we did.
We were Enlightenment thinkers; we believed that society and government should evolve over time. It's why we let you guys amend the Constitution. Hell, we did it ten times right after the first draft. Also, this was our second stab at a governing document. The Articles of Confederation were a total clusterfuck.
In light of current events, it's also worth noting that we were men of science. At least, whatever the commonly accepted science of the time was. We died of diseases most of you have probably never heard of before. However, with the prevailing vaccine question, we can't stress enough that Washington required his troops to be inoculated for smallpox.
Remember smallpox? No, you don't. Most of you never had it and never will, because there was a vaccine for it, and it worked so well that it pretty much eradicated it from the face of the Earth. And you joke about the ways people die in that Oregon Trail game, but that's pretty much how most people kicked the bucket at the time.
Yes, we believed in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but the first word there is "life." So if the current government (which, by the way, we'd have never allowed women or Black people to participate in) is mandating vaccines, it's to protect life.
At the end of the day, just bear in mind we're long gone. Yeah, we founded the nation and all, but we figured you all would just use what we did as a framework, not as some bullshit excuse to whine about any minor inconvenience. Please, just let us rest in peace.
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Nicely done JBB.
Our founders were also products of their time (just as we are products of our time). To them slavery was seen from a very different context. While they were clearly wrong to enslave human beings, they were born in a time where this was common practice and human beings have a remarkable ability to deem correct what 'everyone is doing' even if it is glaringly morally wrong.
And while brilliant, these men were not gods. It is remarkable what they accomplished with our Constitution. The designed a secular government that effectively resists concentration of power. Unfortunately the party system (especially the fact that we have devolved into a two party system) has found a way to concentrate power and, not surprisingly, replaced most every statesperson with a narcissistic, lying career politician.
In 200 years or so, I am confident that our descendants will be very critical of what we have done. For example, they may think we were out of our fucking minds for pretending that anthropogenic climate change is merely a political hoax. Or that tens of millions have the mentality of sheep who follow their 'trusted authorities' as if they were gods. They will likely look at our borrowing from our unborn great grandchildren to engage in wasteful spending that often accomplishes about 1/10 of what is promised to the American people to be utterly slimy. Who knows, they may even be disgusted at the crap we put into our bodies and the chemicals and industrial abuse of animals required to do so. No doubt they will study the effect of Trumpism to figure out how the human mind can become so cultish, distorted and actually believe the false reality spewed by a pathological liar.
They were men of their times. People need to evaluate them with the proper perspective.
There are serious fatal flaws in your logic on this topic, in my opinion. Your defense of them as regards slavery is that they were men of their times, and were thus perhaps not cognizant that what they were doing was wrong. But then, why do we so often hear that many of the founding fathers WANTED to end slavery?
What was actually happening with the founding fathers and slavery is that they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The recently burgeoning Enlightenment had cause most intelligent people to understand that slavery was wrong , and that human beings had rights. Jefferson and Washington and Madison, etc knew this completely. Of course they say so in the Declaration Of Independence. So what about the Africans? Not so fast, maybe they were not entirely human, at least not as human as Englishmen. In one of his most notorious observations on race Jefferson speculates that perhaps the African race would mate with gorillas.
Jefferson NEEDED his slaves, period. They were his lifelong meal ticket.
John, read this:
We know from their writings that they recognized the contradiction of their words and deeds. So I am saying that most of these learned men did realize the moral turpitude of slavery but were desensitized to it and, in general, did not have a practical alternative.
Yes, that is the point I made. If only you had not ignored my 'glaringly morally wrong' phrase.
That is correct.
My logic was and is perfectly sound. You presumed too much.
You underestimate the financial incentive they had to behave as if slavery was "normal" when they actually understood otherwise.
They could do something that no one had ever done before and create a "republican " form of representative government, but they couldnt do something no one had done before and end slavery? Not "couldnt", they didnt want to. I'm not saying that many of the founding fathers were happy about owning slaves, Jefferson actually felt that slavery was wrong in one aspect because of what it did to white people who owned slaves. This is what is said about Jefferson, he did not like slavery, but he didnt not like it enough to do anything about it.
Why do you make that claim? Here, John, read this:
The words are there ... you just have to read them.
Correct. They had no practical alternative to a substantial foundation of their economy. That is what happens a lot of times. We want to do something the right way but practical considerations block the path. One of the factors that stood in their way was the slavery culture of the times. Imagine what it would take to change the minds of the influential leaders of the time. If you find that difficult to do, remember that within 100 years we fought a civil war over slavery. Not an easy barrier to overcome.
Sorry, there are limits to how much we can excuse the founding fathers because they were "men of their times".
You take that as an excuse. It is an explanation.
You are analyzing our founders based on 21st century standards in a 21st century society, environment and culture. Ignoring these vast differences suggests that you think these men would be advocates of slavery if they were 21st century beings instead of 18th century beings. I don't see it.
Further, you presume that these men could form a new nation while breaking free of slavery (a key part of the economy and culture). That is unrealistic and well-supported by history (especially their writings). If they had tried to end slavery (something that took almost another 100 years of societal and economic evolution and required a civil war) it is near certainty that we would not exist as a nation. So while slavery is utterly immoral our founders, as human beings do, set it aside in favor of the higher priority of forming and maintaining our nation. And, as you noted, the leaders of the time were unwilling to forego their own economic status in order to free slaves. Nothing new there ... people in power tend to not yield power. People, in general, are not that altruistic.
I dont entirely disagree with you, but the fact is the founding fathers knew it was wrong and , at best, kicked the issue of slavery down the road WHILE they were taking financial advantage of their own slaves.
These are not people who need to be praised all the time.
I would post much much more about this but I am afraid it is talking to the wall on this site.
Yes that is indeed what they did.
I think people praise them for their roles as founders and framers.
People "praise" Jefferson for trying to include into the DOI passages that blamed George III for slavery in the colonies.
That deleted passage did not recommend freeing the slaves , it simply blamed the king of England for colonial slavery. It also said that George III encouraged slaves to murder their masters.
Were slaves who attempted to murder their masters in order to gain their freedom justified? I would say so.
And his booty call.
Like the founding Fathers, who started our great county, all the slaves are dead, so why are slaves suddenly such a big deal? when we don't have slaves anymore.
Why do we have someone here who mentions the founding fathers in a positive light almost every day?
What's the problem with that?
John, you are complaining about mentioning the founders in a seed about the founders.
I think that to form a worthwhile opinion on the question of the morality of slavery in its day, one should consider the current push for veganism. Though the two subjects are incomparable for obvious reasons, consider how unrealistic it would be for the entire country to stop eating meat and animal products in one fell swoop. Thinking that concept through to its logical conclusions would illustrate how inhumane that effort would actually be. Freeing millions of livestock would be dooming them to death by starvation, exposure, and widespread poaching.
In the days of slavery I’m sure there were some who actually treated their slaves with some level of dignity, regardless of how indignant the ownership of other humans is at its core. Putting yourself in the shoes of a slave owner it might seem immoral to release their slaves into a world inhabited by less moralistic types, who would ensure said slaves had no opportunity to thrive. It’s not like there was any other replacement for hard labor other than doing the work yourself, and part of the human condition is to take the path of least resistance. The real crime of slavery isn’t so much it’s perpetuation as much as it’s instigation in the first place, and the deeper levels of inhumanity exhibited by those who refused to see slaves as human (aka racists) and treat them as such. It’s a miracle, and something to always celebrate, that the hurdle of freeing slaves was ever cleared.