Our Founders Really Were Liberals...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
This site represents honest conservatism, you know, the type of conservatism that is not afraid to acknowledge that our nation was founded on the principles and values of Classical Liberals. Indeed they were not only liberal in their thinking they were in fact extremely revolutionary in pursuit of their vision.
Conservatism is about preserving the classical liberal principles of our founders while at the same time recognizing and acknowledging that as the world changes, as knowledge grows exponentially, as we become increasingly global and thus more interdependent, we remain ready and willing to adapt to modern realities. Unfortunately for America it is becoming increasingly evident that present day republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and neocons either fail to understand this, refuse to acknowledge it or both. Given this fact it is reasonable to make the statement that present day groups as noted are in fact reactionary, which is to say they favor a return to the status quo of a past era, 1776 to be precise.
While feeling thankful, as well as grateful, for the giants of American Classical Liberalism I decided to fire up my computer and see what was going on at some of the regular "conservative" sites I visit from time to time. One particular site whose administrator I believe is educated and knowledge gave me plenty to think about so I hung around for awhile. What I read convinced me my that 1) my above assessment is in fact correct, and 2) this nation will indeed be in dire circumstances should present republican party "conservatism" prevail.
One particular comment is responsible for this evening's post. It was clear from this comment there is most definitely something to be very concerned with, at least from my perspective anyway. They say ignorance is bliss which may or may not be true. However it is true for sure that ignorance can, and often is dangerous.
Consider the above and after doing so draw your own informed opinion. That is after all what a Classical Liberal as well as a true honest 21st century conservative does. Be sure to spend time ready all the comments as they will prove to be quite instructive.
On a side note Paul Harvey, always one of my favorites, really rocks on this video.
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
This site represents honest conservatism, you know, the type of conservatism that is not afraid to acknowledge that our nation was founded on the principles and values of Classical Liberals. Indeed they were not only liberal in their thinking they were in fact extremely revolutionary in pursuit of their vision. Conservatism is about preserving the classical liberal principles of our founders while at the same time recognizing and acknowledging that as the world changes, as knowledge grows exponentially, as we become increasingly global and thus more interdependent, we remain ready and willing to adapt to modern realities. Unfortunately for America it is becoming increasingly evident that present day republicans, conservatives, libertarians, and neocons either fail to understand this, refuse to acknowledge it or both. Given this fact it is reasonable to make the statement that present day groups as noted are in fact reactionary, which is to say they favor a return to the status quo of a past era, 1776 to be precise.
While feeling thankful, as well as grateful, for the giants of American Classical Liberalism I decided to fire up my computer and see what was going on at some of the regular "conservative" sites I visit from time to time. One particular site whose administrator I believe is educated and knowledge gave me plenty to think about so I hung around for awhile. What I read convinced me my that 1) my above assessment is in fact correct, and 2) this nation will indeed be in dire circumstances should present republican party "conservatism" prevail.
One particular comment is responsible for this evening's post. It was clear from this comment there is most definitely something to be very concerned with, at least from my perspective anyway. They say ignorance is bliss which may or may not be true. However it is true for sure that ignorance can, and often is dangerous.
TruthseekerJuly 4, 2014 at 4:55:00 PM EDT
On This July 4th, DON'T "Thank A Liberal".... The liberals on these blogs always boast that the likes of Jefferson and Washington and Hamilton and Adams and Franklin and many other founding fathers were "liberals", and we should all "thank a liberal" for what the founding fathers risked everything to achieve.
This is, of course, absolute NONSENSE, and the liberals should hide their faces in SHAME for even suggesting that our founding fathers would have condoned, defended, and supported today's liberal social and economic agendas.
Would our Founding Fathers have supported a bloated, reckless, out-of-control federal government?
Would they have supported aborting millions of unborn babies under the guise of "privacy" and "reproductive rights"?
Would they have supported marriage between two men and marriage between two women?
Would they have supported the influx of millions of illegal aliens streaming across our borders unchecked?
Would they have supported providing millions of illegal aliens with federal and state-funded education, food, housing, and medical care?
Would they have supported deficit spending, crushing national debt, and the fiat currency system?
Would they have supported the creation of the Federal Reserve System and the resulting manipulation of our money supply and our country's economic health by the Federal Reserve Board?
Would they have supported the executive branch bypassing the legislative and judicial branches and unilaterally making laws via Executive Orders?
Would they have supported our participation in military actions in foreign countries that did not pose direct threats to the United States?
Would they have supported the breakdown of the family unit through divorce or illegitimacy or abuse or irresponsibility?
Would they have supported the erosion of state's rights via the judiciary?
Would they have supported the erosion of religious freedoms?
Would they have supported a gridlocked legislative branch and an extremely partisan and subjective judicial branch?
Would they have supported the widespread voter fraud that has affected countless local, state, and federal elections?
Would they have supported negotiating with terrorist organizations for the release of American hostages?
The answer to all of these questions is a resounding ABSOLUTELY NOT!
So today, if you must "thank a liberal" for something, thank them for ALL of the items I listed, and while you're at it, thank a few Faux Conservatives, those batty Libertarians and Republicans (RINO’S) too!
Consider the above and after doing so draw your own informed opinion. That is after all what a Classical Liberal as well as a true honest 21st century conservative does. Be sure to spend time ready all the comments as they will prove to be quite instructive.
On a side note Paul Harvey, always one of my favorites, really rocks on this video.
In regards to our Founders being "classical liberals", I read an interesting article recently that says a period in the Declaration Of Independence isn't in the original document. And, without that period our "interpretation of government's role in protecting individual rights" changes without that period. According to the professor who is making the claim, "the importance of government as a tool for protecting those rights" is altered. In other words, our rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness are rights that our government has a role in helping us achieve. Not in just protecting... and everything else is up to us... but in actually working to help us achieve those things. Founding Fathers as Liberals indeed.
ReplyDeleteWe tend to regard our founding through rose-colored glasses, but the nitty gritty details can be sobering:
ReplyDelete"..the first Tea Party in Boston Harbor had less to do with tea than the political ambitions of James Otis, Jr., a certifiably mad lawyer, and Sam Adams, a bankrupt brewer and convicted embezzler. After the British government tried collecting import duties to pay for American defense, Boston merchants — mostly smugglers and tax evaders — protested. American Tempest reveals how Adams and Otis took over the protest movement and seized political power in Massachusetts.
Organizing waterfront workers into raging mobs, Adams and the tax protestors swarmed through the streets, burning homes and dragging opponents to the “Liberty Tree” to be stripped, swabbed in scalding tar, dressed in chicken feathers, and subjected to unmentionable agonies and humiliations. Then, on Thursday, December 16, 1773, about seven dozen men disguised as Indians dumped £10,000 worth of British tea into Boston harbor and sent Boston’s reign of terror spreading across America. Mobs dumped tea and burned tea ships in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and elsewhere, and stripped tens of thousands of Americans of their homes and properties, forcing nearly 100,000 to flee the land of their forefathers forever.
Condemned as vandals by George Washington, the original Tea Party Patriots nonetheless set off a social, political, and economic storm that ended with the Declaration of Independence and birth of a powerful new, independent nation." Tea Party-nothing new under the sun.
Sounds like something you might have gotten from the likes of Howard Zinn, Sy Hersh, William Rivers Pitt, Susan Sontag or Greg Palast. What exactly was your source of reference? I'd honestly like to know. Thanks.
DeleteAll that being said BB Idaho I for one am grateful that for the break from the British Crown and will forever admire those like Washington, J. Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin to name a few.
ReplyDeleteKing George may have kept the colonies loyal had he recognized their need for representation. I'm glad he didn'r.
Indeed. I guess we would have ended up like the Aussies and Cannucks. It is interesting to
Deleteconjecture about the early American expansion (the British gov't tried to keep the Indian lands
inviolate) and what course slavery would have taken. Nor can I imagine my Scandinavian
forebearers immigrating to a Crown Colony rather than the Land Of Liberty!
I don't believe the founders intended us to stay in a mercantile economy fueled by a plantation
ReplyDeleteeconomy itself enabled by slavery.
And if they did, they should be ignored.
John Locke's cult of property could only take you so far and it was up to future generations to learn
and change.
What do you mean by this cult, Ducky?
ReplyDeleteI mean that the founding philosophy which largely derives from Locke and the British enlightenment is held with unswerving faith by its adherents.
DeleteWe are to believe that is is sufficient to create an optimal social structure.
Take any issue with contemporary technology, economics or sociology and the
neoliberal true believers will tell us that he truth (yes, objective truth) is to be found in the workings of the market. True believer, unrestrained capitalism and property, in the conservative true believer's mind cannot possibly be incompatible with representative democracy.
Cult.
Perhaps a straw-man, Ducky, I met yet to encounter anyone, even an Ayn Rand follower, who believes in "unrestrained capitalism and property".
Delete'
RN: you have traveled in such circles, I assume. Have you encountered such an ideology?
good point, RN. In light of what Ducky's has said, history is full of countless examples. more and more and more since 1776, that the real danger lies in letting the government control property instead of leaving it to the people.
DeleteThere are indeed some who approach Ducky's description. Ducky went for shock value a bit though.
ReplyDeleteGovernment has its proper place and in our system of government under the constitution its power is derived from the consent of the governed.
ReplyDeleteGovernment has no business controlling property and I submit the vast majority would agree, even Ducky.
Perfectly stated, RN. However, I have my doubts Ducky agrees, considering what he typed. Ducky can clarify if he wishes.
DeleteThere are different types of property. Perhaps clarity is needed. Money becomes the property of those who earn or squire it by legal means. Government in order to fulfill it's proper function (s) must have sufficient revenue to do so. To this degree it is proper to tax individuals and business for the protection and services we willingly accept and use.
DeleteI don't think Ducky is advocating for nationalizing all property, business, resources etc which would be communism.
Ducky, you're up next...
Spot on again... Did Locke's views on property preclude this?
DeleteI disagree in regards to money being the property of those who acquire it (or "squire it"). Money is created by governments and would have no value without the government that created it. Or that is the way it should work, in any case. In our screwed up system it is actually the FED that prints our money.
DeleteRN and the "spot on" guy might agree with me in my belief that we should get rid of the FED, although not with my assertion that money is not the property of the people who acquire it... but I stand by my assertion. Money is a medium of exchange and not property.
RN,
DeleteIn speaking of "government...fulfill(ing) its proper function" and "having sufficient revenue.." These points, inextricably related, are the big bones of contention between NEO-Lib (Neocons, most of the democrats, a large portion of the republicans, self-professed liberals and many other groupings) and the Classical Liberals (revolutionary era). What are the proper functions? As the list lengthens so increases the size of the pot to be filled by taxes. With the Sixteenth Amendment, that taxation power became increasingly mutated on the national level. Local level politics created its own taxation problems, problems remedied by moving to another locale or a change of local governance. Nationally, with an amendment, change became more difficult. As the power to tax all things nationally, all property IS IN FACT NATIONALIZED, in some portion, and increasingly so.
I hope Ducky does respond. He's a cunard, not a canard.
DeleteMoney is turned into property by the millions hourly. To say that it is strictly some abstraction that the government created and that the government can take away at will is pure, unadulterated fascism.
DeleteRN -- "To this degree it is proper to tax individuals and business for the protection and services we willingly accept and use."
ReplyDeleteI think all of us can agree with this statement. It is broad, general, and as such useless, because we all disagree on what "we willingly accept and use" means and covers.
Jerry, that's why diplomacy and compromise serve a valuable purpose and are often neccessary to acheive success.
DeleteRN,
DeleteThanks for the Paul Harvey link @ AOW. In one of your post in re that video, the quote by William Blake may have been useful: A truth that's told with ill intent, beats all the lies you can invent.
I was interested to learn that the founders read considerably of Montesquieu (separation of powers,
ReplyDeletefirst definitions of feudalism and despotism), so much so, that he was quoted more frequently than even Locke. Unless one is an economist, we need the widely interesting Montesquieu...so interesting that most of his works were banned by the Catholic Index and a prototype for the sociological aspects of people and their government.
Indeed, I recently became interested in Montesquieu and have a lot to learn about him.
ReplyDeleteAs Joseph Schumpeter pointed out his "History of Economic Analysis", the term, liberal, was hijacked (shamelessly, I would add) by the enemies of free enterprise and have thoroughly sullied it, in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteYes, Will, and the hijackers use it for a what is often authoritarian.
DeleteI don't have any problem with the term "Progressive". Anyway, hijacked by who? Also, I am not aware of anyone using the term "Liberal" to describe anything that is authoritarian. That sounds like baseless ad hominem to me.
ReplyDelete