The GPU question of the week.

UPC asks:

How do you think the founding fathers would decide on the hot button issues of today?

I don't think they would be capable of deciding. They would be so shocked and appalled at the way we have taken the freedoms that they fought so hard for and twisted them to fit our own desires, they would cry out in anger.

They would be sickened that we care more about what we want than what is best for our society, especially the most vulnerable, our children. They would find so little honor, so little respect for the great nation they provided.

Perhaps their own words from long ago can speak to us now:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? -Thomas Jefferson Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

Jefferson could not have been more prophetic with this statement on the Judiciary:

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. -Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823


George Washington's words on foreign affairs (see U.N) could be spoken with equal passion today:

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, (I conjure you to believe me fellow citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government.-George Washington, Farewell address, Sept. 19th, 1796


Benjamin Franklin could very well be speaking to our welfare state here:

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.
Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766

And John Adams could be reminding us of what we have lost:

A constitution founded on these principles introduces knowledge among the people, and inspires them with a conscious dignity becoming freemen; a general emulation takes place, which causes good humor, sociability, good manners, and good morals to be general.- John Adams, Thoughts on Government, 1776