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Founding Fathers Were ‘Wrong And Immoral’

By: tomtflorida (Diary)  |  April 3rd, 2012 at 09:37 AM  | 

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jamesmadison

In a brief respite from the joys of the circular firing squad known as conservative politics, today’s column focuses on the left… the far left… the ‘progressive left‘, a.k.a. the Democratic Party.

The Florida Progressive Coalition Blog put out a piece yesterday titled The Constitution Is NOT the Bible. Typically, I avoid the drivel coming from the far left for selfish reasons, namely to keep my head from exploding, however, this piece so accurately captures the state of mind of the far left that it makes an excellent case study.

Before I get into the content, a little background on the FPC Blog. It’s the product of Kenneth Quinnell, who describes it as “a network of concerned citizens, bloggers and activists that believe in a commitment to equality, fairness, justice, effective and efficient government, protecting our natural resources and moving our state and country forward.”

Quinnell is a professor at Tallahassee Community College who teaches American history and political science – surprise, surprise. According to ‘Rate My Professor’, he’s “strict”, “very liberal”, “bitter” and “extremely anal about grammar” – he’ll have a field day with this column should he stumble across it.

He identifies himself as a “political activist” and has been an active blogger here in Florida for some time. He has written for Daily Kos, Crooks & Liars and a few other left wing outlets, occasionally under the moniker T Rex. He also advocates on behalf of SEIU and other union organizations.

He is also listed as a ‘Senior Advisor’ for Progress Florida, a nonprofit organization that promotes progressive values such as social justice, health care reform, environmental protection, economic fairness and strengthening public education.

In short, fellow tea partiers, this individual is the epitome of what we have been up against for the past three years.

If you click on the ‘About’ tab on the Florida Progressive Coalition Blog web page, you will find the word ‘progressive’ used 6 times in a short description listed – and a cheap shot at Republicans. Typical of the left, there seems to be an intentional avoidance of defining what ‘progressive‘ means. Look the word up in the dictionary and here’s what you’ll find;

pro·gres·sive

/prəˈgrɛsɪv/ Show Spelled[pruh-gres-iv] - adjective

1. favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, especially in political matters: a progressive mayor.

2. making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.: a progressive community.

Now I’m sure that’s exactly what our progressive friends want you to think when you hear the term, but in reality, ‘progressive‘ stands for social justice, reparations, wealth redistribution and cradle to grave entitlement, the belief that the state is far more capable of caring for your needs than you are as an individual.

Clearly, there’s little compatibility with Reagan’s view that “if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?”

I realize this is an incredibly long lead in, however, it’s important to lay the proper groundwork here. So back to yesterday’s blog by the good professor…

To spare you the agony of reading it yourself, I’ll list a few highlights. Of course, you are free to indulge, but I recommend a role of duct tape…

Professor Quinnell’s premise is that those who support “bad policy” fall back on the Constitution as a means to support the position. He refers to this as “the nonsensical constitutional principle of “originialism”, where the founding fathers expectations are used to understand the original intent.

In this regard, he states… “who cares what the founding fathers said? It’s not relevant for three reasons” -

1. The law is not what they said, it’s only what they passed
2. They are dead and didn’t live through any of the outgrowth of their original ideas or any of the changes to the way the world works that came after them
3. A lot of what they thought and was wrong or immoral

He then pursues the prerequisite task of denigrating the founders that is now standard fare from the left;

“The founding fathers are somehow thought of as immortal men who were perfect in every way. They weren’t. They owned slaves. They treated women and children as property. They killed Native Americans in significant numbers. They thought that only the wealthy — landowners — should have the right to vote.”

He then directs his angst on the Constitution itself, saying;

“While it has great symbolic value, it was also a very flawed document. There is not one sentence or clause of the whole document that is perfect and there is no logic in sticking with something just because that something is what we’ve always done. The simple fact is the Constitution is a guide and it is a living and unfinished document.”

Sound familiar? He adds… “Nowhere does the document limit the federal government’s power to deal with most issues.”

A truly scary concept that completely deviates from the basic principle of the founders that government is to be feared and restrained. Oddly, I don’t recall the far left having such confidence in government when G.W. Bush was sitting in the White House.

But were Quinnell goes completely off track is when he states;

“I deal with what is right and wrong, not what is legal or illegal. If the government and/or the Constitution say something immoral, then I’m not going to agree with them nor am I going to defer to their point of view or say that I have to because “it’s the law.”

As written in ‘A Nation Of Men Not Laws, author Robert Feinman explains that one of the founding principles of America is that it is to be a nation of laws, not men. He explains that “the flaws of the European history of power emanating from royalty and then passing down to the nobility and, via personal preferment, to court courtiers was all too real to the founders.”

Progressives seem to think that the institution of government was invented in the past 100 years. They forget or intentionally disregard the basic fact that the foundation for the Constitution was based on principles gathered from James Madison’s years of study about the history of government.

This is all so critically important because the progressive left understands that it must circumvent the Constitution and the laws of this land to institute their ‘statist’ agenda. We saw a clear example of this when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid shoved ObamaCare down the throats of Americans. This is where the real battle lies, folks.

And what is the most scary thing about all of this is that Professor Kenneth Quinnell is teaching our children…

Cross-Posted at Florida Political Press

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COMMENTS

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  • Ann_W

    nt

    • up2news

      The left never has a sound argument because there is no basis for their out of the box thinking. The only thing they want to achieve is the downfall of America.

      This type of statement is exactly what Obama is doing. Twist or outright lie to make himself sound either correct or picked on.

      It is only a method to garner favor with leftist that have been taught not to think.
      One could not be a rational thinker to fall for the socialist/communist propaganda.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    Something that ideal-case-only Statists don’t seem to be able to grasp. No reason to put limits on the all-powerful utopian state. Nothing like the total and final power of the government to produce a benevolent society.

    And yes, the Constitution was much better than the men who produced it. 225 years later, and in it’s wake is the the beacon to the world. To borrow from Adam Sandler…Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Hirihito, not descendants of the Founders.

    Yes, slavery was a terrible evil. Of course it would have removed untold suffering if slavery had never come to America.

    But it started in America in 1619 with the first slave. By the time of the American Revolution, the South and its evil plantations had come to depend upon it. Of course the colonies and the South should be criticized for engaging in it. (Little good that it does to dead people.)

    It goes without saying that the earlier slavery could have been eradicated, the better. So next time, ask your not-so-friendly, simpleton neighborhood statist, what moves would you have made to hasten its end?

    Shooting-the-moon for an abolition of it at the time of the Constitution would surely have led to a Southern/Confederate States separate from the Northern United States. And just as surely the tired North had neither the will nor the capacity to do anything about a late 1780s seceding South. What then frees the slaves in the Southern states as the status quo would have been a sovereign South? Perhaps there is an outside chance of some other issue provoking an earlier North/South war leading to an earlier freedom for the slaves, but I think the most likely case is freedom delayed for the slaves in the South well past the 1860s.

    One of Thomas Sowell’s favorite questions for Conservatives comes to mind. Compared to what?

    England can serve as a benchmark.

    In 1787, the Constitution was adopted and British Parlimentarian and abolition champion William Wilberforce began his crusade against slavery.

    Both the United States and Britain banned the importation of slavery in 1807. Along the way, America chipped away at slavery with Virginia banning the importation of slaves (even earlier in 1778), by Slave Trade Act of 1794 banning the construction or outfitting of slave ships before the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

    Unfortunately, the United States didn’t have a William Wilberforce to lead the United States to a total ban on slavery by 1833. But Abraham Lincolns, who I consider a Founding Father, don’t come around that often.

    Fortunately, Lincoln played his cards in a manner that ended slavery, something I highly doubt he could have pulled off without indirect events (e.g. the idiot who fired on Fort Sumter) playing out almost as orchestrated by God

    • goodolboy

      There were approximately 19-20 million africans imported to the New World as slaves. Of those, only about 7% came to North America. America did not invent slavery. It was the Islamist, Portuguese,Africans, and Dutch. Where and by whom is it practiced today? Africa and the Islamist countries. Those blacks in this country should get on their knees and thank the Lord that they were not born in the “homeland” of Africa, of which they seem to be so proud, because they could be living in the Sudan, the slums of some western Africa country, or Zimbawe. I see none of them who can afford it moving to the “homeland” of milk and honey. Comparing the ending of slavery in the UK vs the US is like comparing apples and oranges and space limits an explanation. Lincoln should not be consider a founding father because he was the first to rape states rights as established by the Founding Fathers. He was a tyrant. It is said he “saved the Union” and I ask, “Saved it from what?” A country based on fedralism rather than a central, statist government that has evolved to what we have today? Slavery was on its way out and would not have lasted another 20 or 30 years. I believe that slavery may have been the worst thing to happen to this country as for no other reason its legacy is a group of people who feel they are entitled to what other people have. This is not a racist comment. It echoes that of such great black Americans as Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Shelby Stelle.

      • texastaxpayer

        The legacy of Lincoln isn’t the freeing of slaves its the ascension of the all powerful federal government. Few wish to learn the truths of Lincoln they prefer the myth.

        • larueladue

          here is a good book on Lincoln: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas Dilorenzo. Gives one a new perspective on him and that time.

      • 6eorge Jetson

        Yes, they’re called Democrats. They don’t need history for that.

        I believe in the freedom of the individual. Slaveholders, those were the tyrants. Federalism didn’t mean much to those forced into a death trap/slave ship and treated like cattle for the rest of their lives with no control of their own.

        I don’t like being told what to do. I wouldn’t have made a very good slave.

      • elizaliza

        Usually, Lincoln is hailed as the Great Republican proof that Republicans can’t be racist, because Lincoln freed the slaves! This is not the truth no more?

        So, what about this once popular notion that present day blacks should be grateful that their ancestors were slaves, and get to live in the Greatest Nation on Earth, instead of in Africa …. I still don’t get why that doesn’t bring more blacks into our ranks.

        • demsaresatanic

          as the Great Republican. The invasion of the South instead of economic blockade gave us the disaster of our bloodiest war and the emancipation of the slaves without provision for repatriation of the slaves gave us a disaster for both races. Ending slavery was a noble goal however in my view a truly great man would have handled it better.

          • conservativerock5

            Spooner was both an abolititionist and secessionist. This was because both derived from self-ownership.

            Neither side sought to abolish slavery. That cancels out.

            The north wanted to keep the union, while the south wanted self government.

            The south had the moral high ground.

            However, had the goal of the north been to end slavery, I would give them the moral high ground.

          • demsaresatanic

            and on preserving the Union. It is the means used that I object to.

          • conservativerock5

            1-The North had the high ground on slavery in terms of having or not having the institution itself.

            But in terms of fighting to abolish it in the southern states, neither had the high ground.

            2-I support having the union preserved as well.

            Because I support the right to seceed does not mean I support specific secessions. Both the north and south had problems that should have been dealt with, but both were selfish.

  • 1stRichard

    I had expectations of some sort of new twist or angle and yet it is the same old mantra of socialism. There is a need to realize how important this is,

  • dajeeps

    As soon as A observes something which seems to him wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X, or, in better case, what A, B, and C shall do for X… What I want to do is to look up C… I call him the forgotten man… He is the man who never is thought of. He is the victim of the reformer, the social speculator, and philanthropist, and I hope to show you before I get through that he deserves your notice both for his character and for the many burdens which are laid upon him.

    • dajeeps

      That is their basic bill of rights, or rather legal understanding between the monarchy and subjects, kept getting trampled and lost. The Magna Carta was the third revision of the English charter, and it was revised several times more by the time our revolution came about, with the latest to that date being 1688 as the result the revolution that brought back William of Orange.

      I think the founders had a pretty good idea of how difficult it is maintain a constitutional government, which is why they distributed power broadly, not only among three branches of central government, but also among the states. It seems that even with widely distributed power as prescribed by our Constitution, it has produced only a doubling, roughly, of the lifespan of each of the English revisions.

      It comes down to the point that freedom, in the classical liberal comprehension of it, is not the natural state of humanity, and that once won, it almost assuredly will be ground down until there is nothing left.

      We know from English history over the last almost one thousand years, what they did about it, and kept doing about it. I hope it never has to come to that, but if we don’t want it to die and be forgotten, then we must contemplate our options should the utilization of the political processes fail.

  • davenj1

    and a reason why Liberals are dangerous. They actually live in this insular bubble of thought and can’t think outside the box they created around themselves. As he likely preaches to his audience, I am sure there are liberal circle jerks happening right now. It is people like that who must be engaged in their own forums and taken down. It is actually a rather amusing exercise….

  • funwithknives

    for laws as they exist. He slams them to hell and gone ,but yet what does he offer in place of what we have?

    He espouses this bilge and yet we are supposed to honor what those such as himself would create, absent the restrictions/’chains’, of The Constitution.
    And he gets paid for such drivel…? Man, I need a job like this………

  • Jack_Savage

    No wonder he is bitter. Bless his heart.

    • uselogic

      n/t

  • OccamsRazor

    .

  • elizaliza

    according to tomtflorida (or some site he quotes), Quinnell is

  • Dave_A

    Back when that was the norm:

    1) Land was cheap-to-free (‘free’ meaning there were still areas of the country open to settlement – you build on it, you own it)…

    2) The majority of the country was employed in subsistence or cash-crop farming, making ‘land ownership’ a vital part of employment.

    We weren’t old-Europe, there were no serfs & lords (except down south, with slavery)…..

    A modern-day equivalent to that rule would be ‘only the employed can vote’. Still not great, but hardly ‘only the rich may vote’.

  • Viet71

    He’ll feed without principle.

    Sure he hates conservatives. Conservatives ask questions.

    Trex wants to feed upon the unthinking. The garden variety college student. He’s a predator.

  • Frederick
    • Dave_A

      The enumerated powers, as literally written, are rather broad, and usually not limited by another part of the Constitution except where they intersect with the 1st/2nd/4th/5th, etc (eg, there’s no ‘limit’ on the President’s commander-in-chief power, or Congress’ money-creation-and-valuation power, other than the ballot box – and the 10th doesn’t confer any limits of it’s own on enumerated federal powers)….

      • Frederick

        His statement was literally intended as a defense of the Government dealing with any issue, even if it was outside the enumerated powers. The Constitution is supposed to set out that section of governance that the Federal Government deals with, and the rest is left to the states, or to us.

  • conservativerock5

    We should have added a Constitutional amendment prohibiting borrowing by the Federal government.

    George Mason was a great founding father. His work with the Virginia Declaration of Rights paved the way for the Constitution.

    • conservativerock5

      not the Constitution

    • Dave_A

      There is no way the US would have survived all of our major wars, trying to fight with money-on-hand.

      • conservativerock5

        into all those wars.

        Perhaps the Civil War could have been smaller or never have happened. Can’t argue with that can you?

        Perhaps we would not have gotten into WW1. And we really shouldn’t have. We had no reason to take sides. Now, I know our boats were attacked, but frankly we put the Kaiser’s Germans into a tough position by sailing our merchant ships into war zones. So we got involved for no reason really.

        And due to us not being involved in WW1, WW2 probably would have never happened…it was caused by the effects of WW1 and the Great Depression(borrowing made it much worse)

        All of this is hypthetical, yes.

        With that said, I would be willing to look into an exception for wartime spending, but that provision must be heavily guarded against illegitimate use.

      • lapert

        He was perfectly happy using debt to finance the Louisiana Purchase because in the greater scheme of things, being debt free for its own sake isn’t always the right choice. His 1813 letter to Rep. Eppes is a more interesting read on the matter.