Founding Fathers (Putin, Congress, legal, independence)

[san phlegmatico]

Regarding the intent of the Founding Fathers, Religion, and Democracy.


And now for some fresh insight along the lines of religion and those pesky Founding Fathers from The San Phlegmatico Group...

Issue #1. There is no (and has never been) consensus of thought on religion. People who fight over religious issues are like two mules fighting over a turnip: it's a pointless exercise, it's utterly boring, and it just doesn't matter -- mainly because people will always do as they want to do, or as their masters compel, cajole, coerce, (and bribe) them to do, or perhaps as they are benignly coaxed by their peers and their masters.

You can not win a religious argument. Convert someone, perhaps. But since religion is the province of the dumb, and thus conversion would be a de facto dumbing-down, I say to you enough is enough!

I am tired of seeing this country dumbed-down.

Issue #2. This country was not founded with the express purpose of establishing a theocracy based on a particular brand of religious beliefs (as the conservative Judeo-Christians would have you believe); nor was it founded on some nebulous notion of 'freedom from religion' (as the liberal humanist-progressives would have you believe).

(Those of us in the know understand each side of the religious squabble is playing with semantics, employing rhetoric, and cherry-picking from various legal loopholes and traditions.)

The U.S. was founded for and upon, as all countries are, the whims, self-aggrandizement, and magnanimous wishes of the power brokers which founded it! (That these power elites were largely outcasts in their native lands is simply is beside the point -- often obscuring the actual differences between the ostensible founding premises of this country and the actual founding premises).

Issue 3. "The Founding Fathers' intent" -- a favorite catch-phrase employed by defenders of any hot-button issue, particularly with respect to religion -- is academic, is irrelevant!

I don't understand all this prostrated reverence for a group of guys who basically fled a mother country, committed large-scale genocide to an indigenous people, and masterminded a self-serving republic to be governed (insofar as they could see into the near future) by like-minded land-owning individuals. They did of course bring with them, incidentally, a 'best of' liberal philosophies, enlightened economic paradigms, and English parliamentary-derived frameworks.

If you're a strict-constructionist, you're essentially swimming upstream, against the progress of a few centuries of advancement, technology, and democratic amendments (read: facelifts, which over time renders the Constitution an 'living document' and is thus outmoding the intents of the Fathers each and every day that passes).

Funny, but the Constitution so vehemently defended by the strict-constitutionalists isn't even recognizable today, save for some very vague -- even paradoxically impossible, certainly inefficient -- liberal notions and perfunctory organizational frameworks for a three-branch system of government, system of checks and balances, blah, blah, blah.

The U.S. is of course a democracy of sorts: it originally was an aristocratic-flavored democracy with ties to the old world power structures, certainly replete with injustices, but generally orderly; it has devolved into a free-for-all tyranny of the minorities and interest groups -- a cluster%$# of Social Darwinism, imperialistic greed, crime-ridden urban centers, dissolute morality, and a culture of children-first, adults/ authority figures-second. America ca, 2007: Every man for himself!

If you study Plato's Republic, the path is clear: we are headed for complete implosion because ignorance will reach critical mass, degeneracy and leisuredom will incapacitate our productivity, community ties will be torn asunder by lawlessness and fear (the melting pot of cultures and ethnicities is dissolving all bases for community trust), and a new tyranny will arise out of the ashes to restore order to the chaotic republic.

If you're a loose-constructionist, you're the front-runner -- for now. Democratic ideals rule the day, and the will of the mob will be made to reflect the Founders' intent on a loose-constructionist basis. The duly-appointed leaders will see to it that the correct spin is propagated: that whatever the masses so choose, so will it will be amazingly coincidental that the precious Constitution advocated that it be so!

But you're sailing without a life vest aboard a pirated ship steered by iconoclasts, bottom-feeders, and lowly commoners (the mean of society) -- hubris-filled, ignorant to the core -- who haven't the intelligence, wherewithal, nor selfless awareness essential to adequately captain the Ship of State.

Whatever the exact fate it is that befalls this doomed republic, and whatever history is written in the wake of such tumultuous and state-shaping events that would render her kaput, all will surely be explained away, rationalized, and will amazingly but certainly reflect the 'intent of The Founding Fathers'!

Everything will have happened "just the way they would have conceived it to happen," and the remaining citizens will fall in line, drink the Kool-Aid handed out by masters of the coup (President, Dictator, King, what-have-you), and proclaim the genius of the Fathers and the brilliance of their constitutional designs. Of course, by then, democracy will have cycled out and become replaced with a tyrannical form of government, but it will matter not --

Issue 4. Education. Send your children to private school/ parochial school. Public anything is inherently dumb. Augment with home schooling. But never totally home school your child unless (a) you have the time -- and then some -- to prepare, instruct, and oversee progress; and (b) you are a bona fide scholar yourself.

5. If you're politically-inclined (read: you have placed your hopes and dreams in a candidate or in that Titanic vessel which is the democratic system) or religiously-inclined, be forewarned of your plight and fate:


You:
on the outside looking in,
a slave craven
flag wavin'
locksteppin'
genuflecton'
democratic pawn v.
brains, verve, and brawn.

Obey
your master:
here's the die,
he's the caster
and he's faster
on the mark,
he's Zen; he's
manifestin' ten
cultivating
salivating sin...

Their will to power:
to wilt your flower.

Master edifies that which he himself selects
and mights rights which his wrongs correct --

builds a fire
sing songs and sires
fiddlin' a Lydian lyre
requiem for the pyre --

smoke-filled rooms conspire
for
your hanging
by
your own hands
of
your
own
neck.

There's safety in numbers and so you're capitulatin';
yet all around:
slaves in chains abound;
speed of light beats speed of sound.

So you stare at your navel
and don't dare be too bad
and soon you are able --
Wait! you've already been had!

Omphaluskepsis renders restless
red-headed speckled feckless
in an orphanage all alone:
you in a box made for bone.

You:
on the inside looking out
a square-fed stuffed-fat snout;
sprung to the back, Jack;
Outside:
your master's a laughing sack;

There's a double punch line
to this sick joke:
you're the pig in a poke
your nightmare's their fancy
not a hoke;
and you're strapped to a railroad track:

Here comes a train and at the cross
a Mack.

Your master:
to whom you relinquished your hopes for fears,
slugging away compassions with beers,
leads the winning cheer.

Everything yet nothing is clear;
regretfully you are no seer;
maybe now you know
your life is not your own.

By Paul!
I'm appalled!
By Stephen
Shoulda got even!
That bit about the chain and the ball!
Laid down, not even a foot tall!
A saint slayed,
as good as ain't.

These "Neanderthal despots" --
actually quite civilized --
indeed progressed.
They could have riddled you stone by stone
lashes to lashes
lest to best.

No 'fense, gents
it's Darwin'n choosin':
their winning, your losin'.

All the while you weren't privy; in
the in crowd but crowded out -- the din;
you're the Joker 'n' the riddlin' men;
damned if you did
damned if you did'n!


(c) 2008, San Phlegmatico

[GracieJJ]

Wow, what a mouthful. But yeah, religion sux.. I agree

[saganista]

Seemed to be off to a good start, then the train sort of left the rails...

[tomocox]

Originally Posted by GracieJJ

Wow, what a mouthful. But yeah, religion sux.. I agree

Gracie, You may be right about religion, but I doubt if you would feel the same way about faith, if you knew what I know. I dare you to pick up a Judeo-Christian Bible (any modern translation) and over the next year read/study it entirely and apply what you have read to your personal life.

What I have just asked you to do is something few men or women clerics have done themselves. What you are describing is not the Christian faith as I know it, but rather the Christians who have failed to be Christlike, or who have implored you to be.

[Wendell Phillips]

I cannot help but laugh whenever someone resurrects the "founding fathers" for some improbable thesis in a vain effort to rewrite our history. Our so-called founding fathers, when viewed candidly, were colorful enough characters without our adding varnish to them. Franklin, who is considered to be the "First American" came close to forsaking hearth and home for England. Even Jefferson, with all his slaves (he owned over 600 during his lifetime), was hardly the liberal reformer we would have him be; and despite the efforts of modern-day Christians to convert him, the truth is that he was a deist, who had no qualms about revising the Bible to suit himself. See The Jefferson Bible: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth (1820). The "times that try men’s souls" bring out firebrands like Paine; who, if he was not a founding father, was certainly the midwife of American independence, and abetter to the overthrow of the French monarchy as well. Like Jesus, we would not be able to stand him. (Indeed, Paine was such a pain in the arse that he managed to make himself persona non grata in England, America and France!) Our perception of these characters is clouded by the dark glass of history, and distorted by attributions that represent so much wishful (rather than critical) thinking. It is like crediting Rembrandt’s paintings with depth of hue when their darkness is due to his using cheap paint.

[Philosophizer]

Ben Franklin once said something along the lines of "A society lacking in virtue isn't fit for self government." I think it applies well today. Regardless of whether or not you are religious, virtue, morality, and right and wrong were more clearly defined in the minds of the men and the society in which this country was founded upon. To be completely honest, it has all been down hill for humanity since the enlightenment period.

[Yeledaf]

Originally Posted by TexianPatriot

Ben Franklin once said something along the lines of "A society lacking in virtue isn't fit for self government." I think it applies well today. Regardless of whether or not you are religious, virtue, morality, and right and wrong were more clearly defined in the minds of the men and the society in which this country was founded upon. To be completely honest, it has all been down hill for humanity since the enlightenment period.

Except for Jonas Salk and a few other folks.

[Wendell Phillips]

Benjamin Franklin also thought that the turkey (not the bald eagle) should have been made the national emblem represented on the Great Seal adopted by the Congress. No doubt, Franklin was right: the turkey (which Mark Twain derided as stupidest bird on earth) is much more representative of the character of the American people.

[Yeledaf]

Originally Posted by Wendell Phillips

Benjamin Franklin also thought that the turkey (not the bald eagle) should have been made the national emblem represented on the Great Seal adopted by the Congress. No doubt, Franklin was right: the turkey (which Mark Twain derided as stupidest bird on earth) is much more representative of the character of the American people.

Yeah, I wish we were smart, like the Germans (Kaiser, Hitler), the Russians (Czars, Lenin, Stalin, Putin), the Chinese (Mao), or the French (guillotine, porn movies with actors in black socks, Jerry Lewis).

Face it, "Wendell": every country has its share of lu-lus. It's just that everybody CARES about ours.

Why? Because we're number one, baby. With a bullet.

[agreatlife]

Was there a point to the OP's ramblings?