The Founding Fathers

[masterpanthera_t]

(07-23-2020, 10:34 AM)BmorePat87 Wrote: A lot of people have already articulated many of my thoughts. We can judge people within the context of their time. Most of the founding fathers were great people who did great things. I think we can apply more scrutiny regarding slavery to someone in 1861 than we can to someone in 1787 given the evolution of society's view on the topic.

The catchall term "Founding Father" shouldn't be a shield, however, for scrutiny. Not all of those involved in establishing our nation were equally great or equal advocates of democracy.

I think I generally agree with these sentiments. However, while the founding fathers were great in many ways they were certainly not infallible. Their work in setting the course of democracy in this country was a great service and model for the American experiment. Wts, I also think they are spoken of in near god like terms which isn't warranted. It's ironic that in some ways we give them credit (deserved) for a vision of a society built on freedoms for its citizens which was unheard of in their times, yet somehow say we must not scrutinize  them too harshly for not being able to see past their times when speaking of slavery and 2/3rds of a person and such. 
I agree they deserve respect for their extraordinary qualities, but at the same time properly balanced. As Bels mentioned, I'm sure they themselves would not be comfortable with as much adulation as they're given. 

Not necessarily a drastically different opinion to yours, just wanted to emphasize what I view as ironic and dare say a contradictory perspective when speaking of visionary leadership. I think in some cases it leads to a stifling of some views which might be contrary to the founders. I don't mean we must curtail any freedoms, but sometimes I've seen arguments simply consist of "well we can't do that because that's not what the founders wanted". They were definitely visionary in great ways, but not eternally so in every way. But I think I'm digressing a bit.