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Were the founding fathers actually dumb af?
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We've given the SC more power than the founding fathers conceived.
OP
OP
People were still dying relatively early back then, I am not agreeing with lifetime appointments, just saying it was a different time.
Indeed. It isn't a lack of foresight from the founding fathers that led to our current situation. It's been 250 years and the systems of oppression are still chugging.
The founding father's vision of democracy was better than the government that they experienced before. It was a positive step forward for the era in which it was conceived.
The problem is that the Constitution is viewed as a sacred document by assholes, basically. The view that our governmental principles can't change at all with the times is insane.
The problem is that the Constitution is viewed as a sacred document by assholes, basically. The view that our governmental principles can't change at all with the times is insane.
We had a number of tools to avoid todays problems, we just failed to use them, created new obstacles, and adopted some arbitrarily restrictive views of what our government should look like. The founders didn't decide the court should stop expanding, they didn't decide to place a hard cap on the number of representatives we could have, they didn't decide that you need 60% of votes to pass legislation in the Senate, and they didn't decide to let a criminal and traitor rise to the Presidency (for example). There's been many inflection points where certain things could have been prevented and either our elected leaders or the populace made the wrong decision.
It's not just about potential naivete and not having futurevision. Some things were probably accidental or fairly unforeseen, sure. But they were mostly elites with interest and intention to design the system in a way that benefitted them at the expense of the average joe. "Tyranny of the majority" is an extremely transparent example that always comes to mind.
Yup, it was it was really cool when the US showed Britain up by abolishing slavery decades before the US got around to it vis a vis a *checks note* civil war. Much better system
The thing people don't get is that what we ended up with wasn't actually what any of them wanted, most of them thought it sucked for one reason or another but also knew it was better than anything else they could have all agreed to. The whole amendment process was there as much to provide a way to adjust for unforeseen needs but also a way to fix their mistakes, of which everyone would have agreed there were many. Their deification over the following centuries conveniently forgets that they were mostly concerned with just making something better than what they put up with as colonies or their first attempt of independent government with the articles of confederation
This. The convention was such a shit show that I don't think any of the founding fathers walked away from it happy. The whole fucking thing was political compromise. Fuck, a lot of the flaws are because Virginia wanted to keep being the big dog in the new nation.
They cobbled together a system that would allow independent states to form some form of a centralized government. They made compromises to get slavers and others onboard and the fact that we are still using it means they got some things right. Getting somethings right though isn't an excuse for later generations to become more and more resistant to changing stuff when it no longer works.
While many of the founding fathers were slave owning pieces of shit I don't think it is fair to dump all the blame on them when their descendants shaped a bunch of stuff in their favor as well. Like others have pointed out, so many things people complain about are not actually in the constitution, but are gentleman's agreements made decades or centuries later as a compromise that worked for the elites at the time.
While many of the founding fathers were slave owning pieces of shit I don't think it is fair to dump all the blame on them when their descendants shaped a bunch of stuff in their favor as well. Like others have pointed out, so many things people complain about are not actually in the constitution, but are gentleman's agreements made decades or centuries later as a compromise that worked for the elites at the time.
The founding fathers outlined things, and likely believed they would evolve as needed by a growing nation.
It's the fucking morons- Republicans especially- that refuse to bring the constitution or other political institutions up with the times.
It's the fucking morons- Republicans especially- that refuse to bring the constitution or other political institutions up with the times.
This right here, 250 years is a long ass time considering how much we've advanced since then.
It's the exact reason a lot of that old shit should be updated, just look at weaponry back then vs what is available today or health care.
Can't imagine they would have ever believed we'd still be on Constitution version 1.5 or whatever 250 years later.
But honestly punting on the issue of slavery made the whole thing tenuous from the outset. Plus the only other time in US history where a rewrite of the Constitution would have been practical was after the Civil War. I'm not sure if there was an appetite to do so and Lincoln's death really ruined a lot of things politically.
FDR might also have been able to get it done but again I'm not sure if the appetite was there.
But honestly punting on the issue of slavery made the whole thing tenuous from the outset. Plus the only other time in US history where a rewrite of the Constitution would have been practical was after the Civil War. I'm not sure if there was an appetite to do so and Lincoln's death really ruined a lot of things politically.
FDR might also have been able to get it done but again I'm not sure if the appetite was there.
Recognize that when the US Constitution was written in the 1780s, the concept of universal suffrage didn't exist yet. These were ruling elite types conceiving of a government made up of ruling elites. In those days, the sell was that only propertied white men should be given the vote because, being independently wealthy, only they were immune to political corruption.
Realizing this about them, it shouldn't be hard to see why they thought SC justice lifetime appointments were the way to go.
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The point of the Senate is:
(a) to loosely replicate the effect of the British House of Lords by checking the power of the popularly-elected House of Representatives; and
(b) to prevent the large states from totally dominating the federal government. If you were Delaware or Rhode Island and being asked to join a federal union where a quick glance at the map would tell you you were constrained in how big you could ever grow while many other states had huge relatively unsettled land and the prospect of more states being admitted, you would want safeguards for your interests.
(a) has become moot because of the growth of pro-democratic sentiment through the 19th century that culminated in the Seventeenth Amendment. (b) is something that people tend not to think as much about these days because of increased conception of the US as a single country of which the states are mere subdivisions, which was obviously not how anybody in 1789 thought of things when designing the Constitution.
Marbury v. Madison is the decision where the Supreme Court exercised judicial review for the first time, but it did not invent the concept, which is built into the US Constitutional framework. Indeed, the whole document is unworkable without it, because if there is no judicial review than things like the federal structure of the union and the Bill of Rights have no enforcement mechanism. This was discussed by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers.
It's fine to write "Congress shall make no law concerning X", but if Congress decides to make a law concerning X anyway and the president signs it, unless the courts can strike it down then the Constitution is meaningless.
The Constitution says it's a lifetime appointment. That's what "good behaviour" means.
In Mexico the justices last 15 years and that's already an insane amount of time but oh boy is it better than what you guys have.
Also we have 11 of them, and we don't say that "so many are conservative/liberal/whatever", which is bonkers to me when I read USA news.
Also we have 11 of them, and we don't say that "so many are conservative/liberal/whatever", which is bonkers to me when I read USA news.
Well, no.
The entire indigenous population of the entire Western Hemisphere, before 1492, was around 60 million. Only about 8 million lived above what in now Mexico at that time.
By the time of the American Revolution, less than one million indigenous people lived in all the land the United States now occupies (which even after the revolution was still largely controlled by the British, French, and Spanish for some time).
Again, that in no way absolves the US of anything at all. It does not make us half as responsible, as you say. We are completely responsible for our genocide that we absolutely committed on a mass scale, and against 1 million or 100 million people, it is still the same crime with the same stain on our national identity.
But an important part of honoring and understanding history is having an accurate picture of what happened, when it happened, and where it happened.
They were reasonably smart but they were trying to solve specific political problems of their particular time and place. Obv it only tentatively worked because it completely fell apart into civil war within a couple generations. Many of them also hated each other and completely disagreed with others.
The Constitution does indicate term. It does not indicate numbers; indeed, that has been altered legislatively a number of times.
I agree with this. The senate needs to do its fucking job. It's been pretty inept since the 70s. Abolish the filibuster, so work can actually be done. Good and bad can come from this, but it's better than living in fucking limbo forever.
In it's context where homogeneity and power only be wielded by men was the norm it was the best you could hope for in a democratic document, they learned from a lot of mistakes others made (romans, etc). No way they would have thought USA would have so many catholics in power for example which is the current SCOTUS majority.
Ironically some of the founding fathers would have expected black folks to be free and eventually get in to power even if they were not at all fond of that idea (one of the drafts they made didn't allow slavery i believe?) and they didn't mind jewish folks either, which was as progressive as you could get at the time. An irish catholic woman on the supreme court though would give them a fucking heart attack.
Ironically some of the founding fathers would have expected black folks to be free and eventually get in to power even if they were not at all fond of that idea (one of the drafts they made didn't allow slavery i believe?) and they didn't mind jewish folks either, which was as progressive as you could get at the time. An irish catholic woman on the supreme court though would give them a fucking heart attack.
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You combine this with the fact that judicial review wasn't a thing in that same document. From their perspective, the Court being sketchy wasn't that big of a deal. They only reviewed laws, what could they do?
Marbury v Madison was when the Court gave itself the ability to nullify laws based on their own ruling.
The senate was formed as compromise between the more populous states and smaller states. The fear was that smaller state's issues would be drowned out by bigger states if Congress was based solely on population. What merchants in New York and Boston needed from the government is different than what less populace agricultural states needed from the government. Giving each state two senators would allow each state to have equal representation in at least one of the chambers avoiding terror by majority. At the same time, we couldn't have all of Congress have equal representation, because of fear that bigger states would be ruled by minority. So the house of representatives was created to give representation base on the size of the population. This way they would both have to work together so every states problems and issues could be discussed together.
I think what people need to realize is that the founders were not thinking of the government in terms of political parties when making it, but instead in terms of individual states and regions. People in those days identified more with their states than as a country as a whole. They didn't say they were Americans, they said the were Virginian or Pennsylvanian. State loyalty would be something that was strong all the way up until the Second World War when the country became more global, but it did get gradually weaker after the Civil War. When the Constitution was written, they were still also naive to think that political parties wouldn't be a thing. It became clear during Washington's presidency that this was sky in the pie thinking. Still, even when political parties did pop up, they were still subservient to regional and state loyalties. That is why you had political parties, like the Democratic party, divide between southern and northern factions right before the Civil War. Political parties at the time were also more ideologically mixed and not as cleanly divided as they are now. Both political parties would have a mix of what we considered modern Democrats and Republicans in each party. It wouldn't be till 60s before the way the two political parties became so cleanly divided. (You can guess as to why)
I think the founders didn't imagine a world in which people's identities would be so connected to political ideology. Which seems stupid now, but the world was not nearly as connected as it is now. They never thought things like television and the internet would exist and how it would be able to brainwash portions of the country into believing what ever they said. They had newspapers, but basically every town had their own newspapers, so any extreme ideology would end up being isolated to a specific place. It's similar to how the founders could not imagine the kinds of weapons we have today when they wrote the second amendment. The guns they had were highly inaccurate and took awhile to reload, not something that could easily be used to create mass killings by individuals. That is why they gave future generations the ability to change the constitution. The founders never intended for the constitution to be a stagnant document. It was meant to change with the generations.
There is a check on the Supreme Court, and that is impeachment and removal by Congress. Also, they courts didn't have nullifying powers until Marbury v Madison, so what they could do was more limited. Lifetime were their because the were afraid that the courts would be influenced by the other two branches if they were term limited. Justices step off the court and suddenly the legislature and the president could stack the courts with people who would do what ever they wanted regardless of how illegal it is.
They were a bunch of racist rich people that didn't want to pay taxes to a king that was across an ocean. So yeah they were q bunch of stupid hypocrits. Claiming that all men are created equal while limiting the power of the poor and enslavinf Black people is pretty dumb and hypocritical.
SCOUTS has lifetime appointments but Congress still has the power to remove a judge from SCOTUS. Congress can also change the lifetime appointments to whatever they want it to be.
Part of the problem of SCOTUS is Congress not doing it's job by making and changing laws. Instead Congress has let SCOTUS make and change laws for generations.
Even if there is a new ruling that greatly benefits the American people, like Roe, Congress should make it an official law. Too bad Congress is full of cowards that are afraid of being voted out for during their job. They're less likely to be punished for a SCOTUS decision, but I really hope that changes for Republicans this year.
SCOUTS has lifetime appointments but Congress still has the power to remove a judge from SCOTUS. Congress can also change the lifetime appointments to whatever they want it to be.
Part of the problem of SCOTUS is Congress not doing it's job by making and changing laws. Instead Congress has let SCOTUS make and change laws for generations.
Even if there is a new ruling that greatly benefits the American people, like Roe, Congress should make it an official law. Too bad Congress is full of cowards that are afraid of being voted out for during their job. They're less likely to be punished for a SCOTUS decision, but I really hope that changes for Republicans this year.
The "they just didn't want to pay taxes!" some people keep using isn't really accurate.
The "without representation" part was actually a very big deal to a lot of Americans at the time.
The "without representation" part was actually a very big deal to a lot of Americans at the time.
"Why did people from 200+ years ago not have the same thoughts and beliefs as me..???"
The thread.
The thread.
Most historic life expectancies include infant mortality. If you limit the pool to only people who made it past the age of 12, then life expectancy jumps to somewhere in the mid sixties to early seventies for most of human history.
The smartest thing they did was make a document that can be changed with the times. We are the fucking idiots who continue to refuse to do what the constitution was designed to do.
