>No rational reason to treat their work like some higher command centuries later. I think the "rational reason" over time really is that no one has come up wit

>No rational reason to treat their work like some higher command centuries later. I think the "rational reason" over time really is that no one has come up with better ideas. My theory is that we look at the past through the filter of a lens, and this lens typically only lets the brightest shine through. Like them or not, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin left behind writings that were objectively superior in utility to many of the other founders. If you ever had the misfortune of being obliged to do an analysis of something like the Lincoln-Douglas transcript, you really can see that one set of ideas is so much better thought out than the other. American blacks had numerous leaders, but the reality was that MLK had ideas that were simply objectively superior to many other black american leaders. Throw in the almost Periclean eloquence of most of the guys I highlighted there, and you end up with a bar that's impossibly high to get over. It takes a generational type of steward to meet that kind of a standard. Which is why, over time, that standard starts to seem like a "higher command". You can set new standards that are in opposition to the established ones. However, you really would need well thought out ideas. Those ideas would have to grow the segment of people benefiting from the current ideas in a society. Finally, to top all that off, you'd need a steward for those ideas with a fervent commitment to them, an almost Socratic wisdom, and a Periclean eloquence. All these conditions are difficult to meet. In fact, it's only natural that all these conditions will rarely be met simultaneously. On balance I think this is good. I mean, at the other extreme we'd have the ideas of some user named MonkeyAnal on Youtube being taken as seriously as the ideas of Jefferson. Stability demands Jefferson's ideas carry the weight in that situation. At the same time, it is possible to attack Jefferson's ideas and change the standards he set. You just have to be Lincoln writing to Ripon, and not MonkeyAnal ranting on Youtube. Again, an almost impossibly high bar, I'll grant you that, but at the same time that bar provides certain safeguards.