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Would they be at all pleased? Whenever I am looking at a question like this most of the things that people say are negative and only the bad things are focused on. I would like to know what else would they think of this country? What would they think of our inventions, cities, current politics, the people, and everything else. Suppose that they were brought here from Jul 4th 1776.
Well first I think they would be befuddled and demanding to know by what work of magic they have been reanimated and vaulted into the 21st Century and for what purpose. They would want to know if they can be returned to their own time when they were still alive and if so, would they meet themselves or replace themselves? And they would want to know what those strange iron birds in the sky were.
Once they are over the shock of having this seemingly supernatural experience take place, and some trust is established between the time travelers and those who brought them forward, then they would have to be brought up to speed on a couple of centuries worth of events since they were last on the stage. They would have to learn about the wars, the termination of slavery and debtor's prisons, women's suffrage and the feminist revolution, nuclear bombs, communism, 9/11, professional sports, same sex marriage, giant corporations, the internet...there will be a lot to explain, an awful lot. I wouldn't want to be the one who has to answer when they ask about the show "Dexter."
I would think that they would all be so blown away by the changes and technological advances, not to mention the experience of being yanked through time, that their personalities would be so deeply altered that it becomes impossible to predict how they would react to today's USA.
I don't think it would be a world they could even fathom - the country is significantly more diverse and significantly larger than they ever experienced.
They would be shocked. One thing they wouldn't approve of would be the low educational levels because the founding fathers were well read and educated. They believed that only an educated and informed electorate could be trusted to provide good government.
Our schools are only a shadow of what they were even 50 years ago. Kids are so impertinent that a teacher is a police man, not a teacher. Talking on cell phones in class which the teacher is trying to teach--rude, and how can anyone learn anything. These kids not only do not learn in school but most of the information they get is from brief tv newscasts or the internet. Easy for them to be uninformed and get brainwashed by fast talking politicians. Not what the founding fathers had in mind.
They would be shocked. One thing they wouldn't approve of would be the low educational levels because the founding fathers were well read and educated. They believed that only an educated and informed electorate could be trusted to provide good government.
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Well, yes, but the Federalist solution to that wasn't creating a greater number of educated people, it was limiting control of the government to the existing elite. The anti federalists of course were happy with the idea of education being handled on the state, not Federal level.
I suspect that any shock that they had over education levels would be far down on the list of shocks, trailing phenomena such as the availability of pornography on the internet, a black man in the Oval Office, China a world power and Great Britain an also ran, that the moon had been visited by humans.....their first few months in our time would be nothing but serial shocks.
Very interesting question. Frankly, I'm not even sure what I think of today's world, having come of age in the 60's ... which was about the time a lot of the craziness seemed to accelerate. The more the world changes, however, the more apparent it seems to me that people themselves don't change.
In that respect, the 1776'rs would certainly be surprised by the U.S. population growth, technology advantages in transportation, communication/information systems and a host of other 'modern conveniences.' But, they probably wouldn't be surprised at all by the attitudes, values and approach to life itself of modern man.
Would they be at all pleased? Whenever I am looking at a question like this most of the things that people say are negative and only the bad things are focused on. I would like to know what else would they think of this country? What would they think of our inventions, cities, current politics, the people, and everything else. Suppose that they were brought here from Jul 4th 1776.
They would throw up, fall into deep depressions, and probably end up committing suicide.
We were given the greatest gift in history--freedom from tyrannical government--along with specific instructions on how to keep it.
But citizens sat back and allowed cancerous government to grow until it had so much power that it managed to overthrow the #1 most important Constitutional limit on centralized Big Government power--the prohibition of imposing a federal income tax. Our federal politicians wanted to start waging Empire wars, and WWI was the perfect entry point.
Then we put the cherry on slavery-to-government cake by allowing withholding of income tax from paychecks in 1943--all so our president could join WWII and again play world empire. Income taxes skyrocketed and never came down again even though the war was over, and Washington politicians learned to spend and spend and then borrow and spend some more. Now the working class is literally a slave to Washington, who decides how much they WANT to take from our paychecks.
The circumstance that led to America's establishment will never be repeated: a huge new area to expand into, no large government already entrenched in place, and enough uncorrupted intellectuals who realized that Libertarian ideals were the ONLY way to ensure a free nation. We couldn't have failed more completely or spectacularly, and fixing the problem is no longer even possible without a wholesale bloody revolution (that likely would result in yet another corrupt Big Government with new power-mad lunatics in power).
Why would the FF be shocked at the so called "low educational levels?"
In 1776 the average American exposure to education was a few years in a one-room school house. If that.
Far more people today, not just in numbers but as a percentage of the population, are "better educated." In 1776 there was no system of free schools or libraries, the number of universities and colleges was miniscule and advanced education was pretty much the preserve of a privileged minority.
Quote:
Originally Posted by in_newengland
They would be shocked. One thing they wouldn't approve of would be the low educational levels because the founding fathers were well read and educated. They believed that only an educated and informed electorate could be trusted to provide good government.
Our schools are only a shadow of what they were even 50 years ago. Kids are so impertinent that a teacher is a police man, not a teacher. Talking on cell phones in class which the teacher is trying to teach--rude, and how can anyone learn anything. These kids not only do not learn in school but most of the information they get is from brief tv newscasts or the internet. Easy for them to be uninformed and get brainwashed by fast talking politicians. Not what the founding fathers had in mind.
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