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The phrase “founding fathers” is gross and embarrassing as an American. They weren’t deities and they didn’t happen to invent the ultimate possible government f

The phrase “founding fathers” is gross and embarrassing as an American. They weren’t deities and they didn’t happen to invent the ultimate possible government for all time. We’re using computers to talk about stuff they literally wrote on animal skins with bird feathers! They rode horses to go visit other states, we have global fiber optic networks. Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now.

wilsonnb3 4y ago
> Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now. Which is why the government system they created allows us to update the constitution. Which we have done. Many times. At least give specific reasons for why you think we should abandon the political philosophy that has underpinned our government for almost 250 years rather than vague references to technological changes.
- bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
  Sure. Why send a handful of representatives from each state to Washington? With horses somebody needed to physically go. Now we can all watch C-SPAN. If we can vote for American Idol we can vote on laws. Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. It never did before but now it does. Of course I don’t want to have to study every law and decide how to vote, that would be a full time job. So I’ll pick a representative and add my vote to the weight of theirs. But I can change my representative any time, even on a vote by vote basis, and obviously they don’t have to be from my state. There are all kinds of better way of doing things that are possible now that nobody has gotten around to trying.
  - splintercell 4y ago
    > Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. I feel like you made zero effort to understand the point I tried to make. Founding fathers may have been from a different time, but they absolutely weren't wrong about democracy not being a solution. They studied numerous constitutions written during the antiquities and correctly concluded that for a large geographical nation like the US, democracy cannot work. That part does not change just because we have super fast communication lines and computers today.
    - bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
      They absolutely did not consider the “large geographical nation” that the US has become, because it did not exist as such at that time. They had 2.5M people, we now have 330M. We’ve scaled 100x. It shouldn’t be surprising that we need to rethink the initial architectural decisions. Think about it this way. They got to study their antiquities and learn from those lessons right? It would have been really weird if they had said, “Look, wise men already studied this stuff and figured out the right way,” and they’re talking about ideas from the year 1500, as if there was nothing to learn from the preceding 250 years. They didn’t do that. Why should we?
      - splintercell 4y ago
        > They absolutely did not consider the “large geographical nation” that the US has become, because it did not exist as such at that time. You are making the same mistake as in the earlier part. US was already pretty big at the time of US constitutional debates to make direct democracy not possible. > They didn’t do that. Why should we? You're more than welcome to do that, but understand something, all the past constitutions/republics/democracies is data, which cannot be easily replicated and controlled for. You're going to come up with a new political system which ignores literally every negative lesson of the history of past 3000 years then you will need to explain how are those concerns not necessary. Founding fathers were, really really really worried about things devolving into a military dictatorship and violation of individual rights. There are plenty of reasons to criticize them for not caring enough about the individual rights, but none that their concerns were unwarranted. Just to give you an idea of the concerns we need to care about: - Build a system which is democratic in nature and works for a large country like ours. - Make sure that it prevents the democracy from violating individual rights. - Make sure that it does not become a dictatorship (like how Roman Republic ended and became a dictatorship when Julius Caesar declared himself the permanent dictator).

wilsonnb3 4y ago

> Even if they were good ideas then, it’s not remotely the same world we’re living in now. Which is why the government system they created allows us to update the constitution. Which we have done. Many times. At least give specific reasons for why you think we should abandon the political philosophy that has underpinned our government for almost 250 years rather than vague references to technological changes.

bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
Sure. Why send a handful of representatives from each state to Washington? With horses somebody needed to physically go. Now we can all watch C-SPAN. If we can vote for American Idol we can vote on laws. Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. It never did before but now it does. Of course I don’t want to have to study every law and decide how to vote, that would be a full time job. So I’ll pick a representative and add my vote to the weight of theirs. But I can change my representative any time, even on a vote by vote basis, and obviously they don’t have to be from my state. There are all kinds of better way of doing things that are possible now that nobody has gotten around to trying.
- splintercell 4y ago
  > Yeah, direct democracy, computers make it work. I feel like you made zero effort to understand the point I tried to make. Founding fathers may have been from a different time, but they absolutely weren't wrong about democracy not being a solution. They studied numerous constitutions written during the antiquities and correctly concluded that for a large geographical nation like the US, democracy cannot work. That part does not change just because we have super fast communication lines and computers today.
  - bluesnowmonkey 4y ago
    They absolutely did not consider the “large geographical nation” that the US has become, because it did not exist as such at that time. They had 2.5M people, we now have 330M. We’ve scaled 100x. It shouldn’t be surprising that we need to rethink the initial architectural decisions. Think about it this way. They got to study their antiquities and learn from those lessons right? It would have been really weird if they had said, “Look, wise men already studied this stuff and figured out the right way,” and they’re talking about ideas from the year 1500, as if there was nothing to learn from the preceding 250 years. They didn’t do that. Why should we?
    - splintercell 4y ago
      > They absolutely did not consider the “large geographical nation” that the US has become, because it did not exist as such at that time. You are making the same mistake as in the earlier part. US was already pretty big at the time of US constitutional debates to make direct democracy not possible. > They didn’t do that. Why should we? You're more than welcome to do that, but understand something, all the past constitutions/republics/democracies is data, which cannot be easily replicated and controlled for. You're going to come up with a new political system which ignores literally every negative lesson of the history of past 3000 years then you will need to explain how are those concerns not necessary. Founding fathers were, really really really worried about things devolving into a military dictatorship and violation of individual rights. There are plenty of reasons to criticize them for not caring enough about the individual rights, but none that their concerns were unwarranted. Just to give you an idea of the concerns we need to care about: - Build a system which is democratic in nature and works for a large country like ours. - Make sure that it prevents the democracy from violating individual rights. - Make sure that it does not become a dictatorship (like how Roman Republic ended and became a dictatorship when Julius Caesar declared himself the permanent dictator).