It has been said that when the founders of this country met, it was one of the greatest collections of smart people in one room ever. But a bunch of progressive yahoos now want to revisit all the principles our constitutional republic were based on, especially the ones involving separation of powers and other factors slowing down government. It's yet another lame argument that what we need is less gridlock and more on the federal government doing big things all the time:
More bluntly, the Founding Fathers got it wrong.
The men who drafted our governing document came to Philadelphia in 1787 to establish an effective national government, something that the Articles of Confederation had plainly failed to do. However, they brought with them two distinct but interconnected fears, which ultimately kept them from achieving their goal. Disproportionately drawn from the de facto aristocracy of pre-Revolutionary America, they feared that a new class of leaders—the farmers and artisans who were increasingly represented in state and local governments—was elevating parochial concerns over the general good in the business of lawmaking.
[. . .]
The other fear that suffused the drafters' deliberations was that of faction. By “faction,” James Madison, the Constitution's primary author, wrote in Federalist No. 10, “I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed [sic] to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”
[. . .]
To the Founders, writing in the shadow of Montesquieu, power—no matter how democratically won and exercised—had to be fragmented. “In republican government,” Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions
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Well, they certainly got some things wrong. Slavery and denial of voting rights to women come to mind. So does the Electoral College for senators and the president.
Except for our weird system of electing presidents, those other mistakes had to be corrected with Constitutional Amendments.
Our Constitution is generally admirable, but the deification of the Founders is just silly. It's almost as silly as every group claiming the Founders held views similar to the group making the claim (as when "family-values" Republicans insist the Founders were fundamentalist Christians, which could not be more ridiculous).
Che', er Littlejohn, (sorry) you should have paid attention in history class.
At the time this country was founded, what was the worldwide "norm" concerning slavery and what was considered a womans' role in virtually all societies worldwide?
Context is your friend, my Marxist friend!
Well, let's spell it out so the more simple-minded can follow along.
Fine, the founders didn't get slavery and denial of voting rights to women "wrong." They "enacted provisions in a system that later had to be updated to reflect changes in society and the world."
Which is to say they weren't perfect god-like beings that created a perfect system. That's why they put an update mechanism in it.
Updates are a pain in the ass, yes, but they are necessary from time to time.