Not really a joke, though. Back in the old days Syphilis was an untreatable disease causing rampant infertility as well as disfigurement and debilitating pain.
Not universally. Jefferson would have been horrified that the same government he established was still trucking along. 50 years was the longest he wanted it to last, and called for dramatic change at that point
Do you honestly want to live in a country where the established foundations of government changed every 50 years? That kind of chaos and instability would be crushing. There are places like that right now, and first world countries they are not.
They also wrote that system not expecting it to be able to be gummed up by as little as 2% of the population because of how stupid we were about drawing state borders
Not sure many of them would see an issue with AR-15s. They're basically what the military has and what the civilians had back then was usually better than military grade. In fact, American civilians have always had better rifles than their contemporary military.
I loathe the title, and strongly disagree with it. Also, heard the presenter is a hard right-winger, but this is still an interesting history lesson. I never would have guessed most of this!
I'm betting the founders would have thought having a lesser armed citizenry to be pointless. Of course, they might well have thought that such a giant, world policing, military to be a far worse mistake.
I mean, it’s super hypothetical. We lift them up but they were just a bunch of dudes living in their own times. While I’m sure they wanted a framework that would lead the country into future prosperity, they knew adaptation was necessary.
They also knew that the backbone of this country's defense were militias made up of citizens. We don’t really have those. I’m all for regulated militias coming back. They could possibly get exceptions for many banned weapons.
Every citizen doesn’t need to have access to military grade weaponry at any given moment. Even when I served, my shit was locked up and required a document trail for access and ammo use.
Balancing safety and personal rights is a complex and divisive issue. Everyone having all the guns would be super cool with me if we fixed gun culture, mental health access, and our many many societal financial issues. 'Til then, reasonable laws.
I have a feeling the conversation to have with most of the founders would be centered around the political weaponization of the Second Amendment in the face of almost daily mass shootings. I have a strong suspicion that the "well-regulated militia" part of that amendment would become much more pronounced.
They would be far more concerned with the government embracing fascism, than they would about 2nd amendment considerations. If anything, they'd push for a less restrictive 2nd amendment, and dismantling of federal power structures. They were revolutionaries, after all.
Offenses under this section are felonies that are punishable by up to 5 years in prison, a fine of up to $10,000, or both, for each offense.
Edit: can we just talk for a second about how oppressive the law is for poor people? Do you have $10,000? Cool, give it to us and go home. Oh, you don't have it? FIVE YEARS in a federal penetentary!
Not really. He could be a miserable bastard at times but all the sources agree he was very open minded and willing to accept the evidence of his eyes and honest arguments, condemning colonist atrocities against natives despite have quite a lot prejudice against them himself, freeing his own slaves, petitioning for abolition in Congress, etc.
He'd look around, say, "Well it seems to have worked out, where's the whorehouses?"
No. His great failing was championing the concept of time-based workdays instead of task-based. Ie, most people left work when everything was done before he got involved.
A few of our founding fathers were based and are remembered for their true merits as people.
And the rest were just the most rich and powerful people around at the time. They had to start a war and a new country in order to get away with defrauding England when they joined in on this settler colonial project. They stopped slavery from ending. They chased wealth and valor, and designed the country for their ends.
WE deserve a new constitution like every other modern country.
Their project was in part to legitimize the transfer of power from the nobility to the elite merchant and "gentleman" farmer class. They were very much a product of their time, just like you and I are today.
I'd say they are more products of their class privilege than their time. If some people at the time were outlawing slavery, and someone else stops them... Who is the product of the time? Well, the conservative, of course. Because progressivism is just a bonus added on, its better than we expect of anyone in the past, and history itself.
Then get enough of the population to agree with you to convene a constitutional Congress and pass that new constitution. It shouldn't be hard if at least 75% of the US aligns with you. If you don't have that much of the population in agreement, then you aren't communicating your desired constitution well or the current one works well enough for enough of the country.
Otherwise you are either implying that we need war to crush the pillars of our society, necessitating the rebuilding of our institutions like what happened with WWI and WWII for the other "modern" countries I presume you are wanting to emulate, or you want to disenfranchise at least 30% of the population because WE is not everyone and YOU "deserve" a new constitution and fuck the "other side".
We both know a lot of our representatives would never convene a constitutional congress because they're so greedy for power they want to draw back democracy. And our representatives dont really represent what any American wants.
I wouldn't imply revolution. I'm advocating a reformist position, where we reform the current government, under the reform rules spelled out in our current constitution. I like a lot of what our constitution says, genuinely.
Yeah I do largely want to emulate social democracies in europe whose constitutions have been updated about once per decade, some starting in WWI/WWII and some even earlier than that. They either have much more representation than us or even have direct democracy. Thats awesome.
Dont misunderstand me, I dont want to leave out conservatives. I want a better constitution. Better representation. Its such a dream though, or representatives will just slip in more spying or police state crap in there.
me: [after successfully using my time machine to bring a founding father to the present] so do you think the 2nd ammendment is still reflective of our culture and technology
With Franklin probably being one of the few exceptions, most of the founding fathers would probably have an adrenaline overload seeing that the USA successfully evolved into the world power to protect its corporate interests. They wouldn't even hesitate to host a billionaire rave party lol.
Now bring someone like FDR, Hugo Black, or JFK and they'd probably be horrified to find so much of their work undone and thrown down the trash.
Nah they would mostly be angry and resentful that the US now has coloured citizens, would probably be too enraged at the 13th amendment to even look at the 1st or 2nd. In fact I give 70% odds that they denounce the modern US as "just as bad as British rule."
People don't seem to realize that all of the founding fathers were slave owners and very enthusiastically supported slavery and the denial of human rights to all but the whitest of the whites. Part of the reason for the independence war was the worry that Britan would outlaw slavery.