Many centrists and moderates have little tolerance for people who describe themselves as constitutionalists, as if that label places them on a higher altar of politics because they embrace The Founding Fathers.
These tea partiers, very late to the game of presidential and congressional politics, seem incapable of realizing that the issues and problems created by innumerable advances in science and technology and commerce cannot possibly be compared to 18th Century life in a small country dominated by farmers and merchants.
I always like to present these constitutionalists with two questions: What do you think the Founders position would be on a ban on texting while driving? Where do you think they would stand on anti-terrorism pat-downs and screenings at airports?
If you are now trying to calculate an answer, you surely don’t get the joke.
Larry Bradley, a writer who bills himself as the ultimate pragmatist, has written an online column that questions the entire concept of determining what the Founding Fathers would think about any particular issue that confronts us in the 21st Century.
Bradley said he was recently queried by someone who has taken the oft-repeated question these days, “What would Jesus do?” and turned it into this: “What would the Founding Fathers think?”
Here’s Bradley:
“Your comment about what our forefathers would think reminds me of a story about the Disney companies from many years ago. It was the 1970’s, Walt Disney himself had died and the kind of movie Disney made in the 50’s and 60’s wasn’t selling anymore. There was a meeting of the corporate executives and one of them asked, ‘If Walt were alive today, what would he say for us to do?’ As a result of that meeting, the group decided to form Touchstone Pictures to make films with a more contemporary feel. The decision, as we know now, was a good one.
“So, expanding on that answer a bit, what the Disney executives did was acknowledge the times and the tastes of the viewing public had changed. If they really considered the question about what Walt would say, then they had to know Walt was someone who not only wanted to be with the public’s times and tastes. Walt was someone who wanted to help determine what the times and tastes were. The executives therefore made a decision they needed to modify their product to satisfy those changing times and tastes.”
Bradley wonders whether the Founding Fathers would tell us to adapt to the current times using the knowledge and opportunities current science and technology gives us, or if they would advise us to bring back slavery and rescind women’s right to vote.
“Probably some of the Founders would argue for both things,” he explained. “The question is, who would we listen to?”
You can read his entire column and more of his writings at his website,thecenterstikesback.com .
