Over on a discussion board-there is a member who continually proves true Barry Goldwater’s old admonition from 1989-the Republican party of his day ( and now) is “full of kooks.”
One of the things I continue to find to be one of the most annoying features of tebaggerdom today is their repeated use of the founding fathers as an example of support for their so called movement. 80-90% of your Mark 1, Mod 0 teabaggers have absolutely no idea what the Founding Fathers really said-or why they did the things that they did.
In out latest little dust up, the offender in question decided it was time to roll out the founding fathers as examples of “what real conservatives are”.
Here is the quote-from this article on Frum Forum, pointing out something I have said here before. Tea Party political views look more like French politics than American politics and the only “revolution” they are leading is exactly like the French one-not the American one.
The Founders were well versed in their history. They knew especially the fate of Greek city-state democracies that fell to demagogues. Alexander Hamilton warned Americans about, “ times of such commotion as the present, while the passions of men are worked up to an uncommon pitch, there is great danger of fatal extremes” and later spoke of populist politicians that “begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people.”
The other conservative Founding Fathers (i.e. John Adams, Gouverneur Morris, John Jay, Thomas Sedgwick, Rufus King, Fisher Ames et. al.) were on the same page with Hamilton. They saw populism as the dark arts of the ultra-democrat and rabble-rouser. Orestes Brownson would later in the 19thCentury refer to the creed of the populist as “The people sovereign; the people are divine; the people are infallible and impeccable.” Needless to say, Brownson wrote that this is not a conservative creed nor should the conservative have any interest in seeing it prevail
Who were the conservatives? Well, lets see Patrick Henry would fit that mold. Thomas Jefferson would fit that mold. George Washington would fit that mold. Madison. Yep I think I could with him.
Which prompted the following reply from said historical scholar:
Any author who would call Alexander Hamilton, is a liberal pretending to know conservatism… Alexander Hamilton was in no way a conservative. So anything written by this author must be suspect………….
Who were the conservatives? Well, lets see Patrick Henry would fit that mold. Thomas Jefferson would fit that mold. George Washington would fit that mold. Madison. Yep I think I could with him.
You have to pause for a minute and shake your head when you read something like that. Hamilton? A liberal? Patrick Henry? Jefferson? Conservative?
Lets ignore-for brevity’s sake-that distinctions such as “liberal” and “conservative” for any of these men are virtually meaningless, when their lives are examined in the context of the time they lived in.
What your friendly neighborhood tea party goer seems to forget is that we live in an America that is very different, in so many ways, from the one the founding Fathers lived in.
Take Patrick Henry for example. He’s an odd choice to represent the Tea Party since, as an organization that just wants to defend the Constitution-they would make an example of someone who opposed the very document. .( He voted against ratification). He was also in opposition to Jefferson and Madison for much of his later life. He also spent most of Washington’s administration opposed to Washington’s policies.
It should also be noted that Henry changed his views in life as he got older-primarily due to the things he saw happening in France and its fear that the US could just as easily go off the deep end. As a result he opposed the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions ( written by Jefferson and Madison in secret)-which proposed that states had a right to “opt out” of laws they did not agree with. He wrote in response to these events :Virginia, “had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the Constitution, and, in daring to pronounce upon the validity of federal laws, had gone out of her jurisdiction in a manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest degree alarming to every considerate man; that such opposition, on the part of Virginia, to the acts of the general government, must beget their enforcement by military power; that this would probably produce civil war, civil war foreign alliances, and that foreign alliances must necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in.”
So much for ringing support of States rights. Where is that man’s birth certificate?
The simple truth is that the Founding Fathers better understood the need to compromise and make compromises than the modern day residents of tebaggerville do. Furthermore-they had the example of what happens when you make a mistake, right before their eyes-in the example of France.
If you are going to cite a source-at least take the time to look it up. The Founding Fathers would have looked down on the current crop of tea partiers-and would have cited them as examples of why they created the Electoral College.