Thinking 'out loud' here re: the tea-baggers

[LuckyTheDog]

The tea-hadists claim to speak for the "true intent" of the Founding Fathers. But, c'mon. That just flat-out does not make sense.

The Founders were a fairly diverse group of guys -- in thinking that is, not in any other way. They did not speak as one and had a wide variety of opinions. They contradicted each other. They even contradicted themselves at times. Because of that, the "intention of the Founding Fathers" isn't really one single thing.

Interpreting the the "true thinking" of the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution is harder than reconciling the contradictions in the Gospels. We're dealing with PEOPLE here.

The federal government was established by MEN and intended to work in the REAL WORLD.

That means they clearly wanted the Constitution to leave some room for changing interpretations. If that was NOT their intent, then they would have offered us strict definitions of words and phrases like "times of good behavior," "unreasonable," or "cruel and unusual." Instead, they left things up to interpretation. That is part of the GENIUS of the Constitution and why it has lasted so long. It isn't rigid. It provides (dare I say it?) wiggle room for each generation.

If you attach too much inflexible dogma to a human institution designed to be strong but flexible, you end up creating something brittle that won't last. That is, I fear, what the Tea Party is trying to do.

I don't know if the Tea-hadists really want the republic to fall apart or whether they are just misguided. But I know this: If they get their way, the U.S. will more than likely come unglued. They claim to want to "return" the U.S. to its "roots." However, where they want to take is is a place we have never been before.

Am I right?

:shrug:

[texastoast]

1. The Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to be flexible

and amendable.

Alexis de Tocqueville remarked that each new generation of Americans made America look like like a different country. Hammer meet nail.

The baggers need to study their history. And it wouldn't hurt them to read a few biographies either.

[LuckyTheDog]

7. Absolutely

It occurs to me that teabaggers treat the Constitution the way fundamentalist holy rollers treat the Bible -- as if it is perfect, unchanging, simple and not subject to interpretation. None of those things are true about either document.

[Drale]

2. Your correct

the tea baggers have learned the texas version of history. The fact is though that on more than one occasion duels were proposed between our "founding fathers", they were not "christians" like the baggers think, but subscribed to the deistic point of view, and I just want to get this off my chest, if Obama really was Hitler like they claim, they would have all been rounded up, and put into ghettos by now.

[texastoast]

3. And what might the Texas version of history be?

Enquiring minds want to know.

[Drale]

4. What ever the texas school board wants it to be

without the "islamic influence" and without tom jefferson because of his views on seperation on church and state.

[texastoast]

5. This hasn't yet come about

The SBOE idiots haven't yet pushed out a word of that.

Current history books are without the extreme political bias. Rick Perry has seen to it that our state doesn't have the money for new textbooks, and I hope we stay that way until we can regulate the power of the SBOE in the next legislative session.

We have a lot of good candidates running for the board this election, and we have hope.

[tanyev]

9. And we already know some of the worst will not be back because they lost their primaries.

Thank goodness.

[LuckyTheDog]

8. What they have...

... is a 7th-grade understanding of civics -- at best.

[arbusto_baboso]

6. The Founding Fathers were NOT religious nutjobs.

They were, by and large, Deists. That means that the fundies who comprise the bulk of teabaggers would regard them as little better than atheists today.

[Winterblues]

10. Tea Baggers confuse the "founding fathers" with the "Pilgrims"

:shrug: To them both are one and the same..