I’m so very tired of the intellectually empty argument from self-loathing (yet surprisingly haughty) Americans that “the Constitution was written by a bunch of dead, white, slave-owners” and that “the second amendment was written about muskets“.
Regarding the first of these two arguments: The Founders were the intellectual superstars of their time. Most of them were rigorously trained, from very early ages, in philosophy, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, writing, politics, religion, the Greek and Latin languages, and economics. Many of them went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton (College of New Jersey), or Columbia (King’s College) as teenagers. Many of them could quote, from memory, Cicero, Plato, Virgil, Horace, Caesar, and others. They mastered these subjects, and were some of the most well-rounded individuals this country has seen, or ever will.
Thirty of the fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention were college graduates, all trained in similar fashion.
The point here is…
The Founders had nearly two-thousand years of human knowledge to work with when they discussed, debated, and created the United States of America. All of this knowledge came into play when they decided to create a Republic instead of a Democracy, a bicameral legislature, an Executive branch, the specific checks and balances and separation of powers, and a Constitution that limited the powers of Government, hence protecting its people; they not only studied and understood the value of limiting government, they lived it.
They took the best from human civilization and tried to avoid the worst. They had the benefit of all human success and failure when making their decisions, which they did not make lightly. Every word in every document and every concept in every plan was painstakingly considered and reconsidered.
And if you think that all of the timeless knowledge and all their classical education became obsolete in the short 236 years since our country was founded, you might be a little too smug about yourself and our current, warped society, and you might lack a practical perspective of history.
And if you don’t think that our government is capable of growing to a point where it becomes so intrusive and destructive (as government is always prone to do), you, or your children are in for a distressing surprise someday.
This little meme does a great job on the second argument.
H/T (I Own The World)
