On Invoking The Founding Fathers

After reading three biographies in the last four months on Washington, Adams, and Hamilton respectively, I've found yet another annoying modern-day phrase that gets bandied about on a regular basis but yet has no real meaning. That phrase is, "The Founding Fathers never intended..." or some such silly boilerplate cant. I've heard it from the Left and from the Right, but mostly from the former. Going forward, if someone uses this phrase in my presence, I shall asking them which specific Founding Father(s) they're referring to, and to reference one or all of them to bolster their point. I don't anticipate I'll get a good response, but it matters not.

The point is this: the Founding Fathers didn't agree on a whole lot. Jefferson was an unapologetic slaveholder, Washington was (in the end) an apologetic slaveholder, Adams was a vehement abolitionist, as was Hamilton. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a bicameral legislature and were diametrically opposed to federalism, preferring decentralized government, with state laws overriding federal. Washington, Hamilton, and Adams were rock-ribbed federalists. Jefferson and Madison hated the idea of a central bank, which was Hamilton's pride and joy. Adams and Washington abhored the idea of political parties, whereas Hamilton and particularly Jefferson were shrewd political operators and as partisan in the modern sense of the word as one could be. Jefferson was a dyed-in-the-wool Francophile who loved the idea of the French Revolution, his enthusiasm growing for it with every radical turn. Adams loathed it, and publicly stated that he "knew not what to think of 30 million atheists". And on and on and on....

The Founding Fathers were as nasty, contentious, back-stabbing, duplicitious, disagreeable, and as polemicized as at any time in subsequent American history. That they came to any kind of compromise on anything is a miracle in and of itself, for there were a good many of them that had no interest in even scrapping the Articles of Confederation (Jefferson being one of them) for the Constitution. Pieces of the Constitution have been scrapped, replaced, and rewritten several times. (Legislatively, believe it or not!) The original manner of presidential election gave the first runner-up the Vice Presidency. (Needless to say, that didn't work out too well...) So, the manner in which government is run is constantly tinkered with, formerly unknown procedures are employed in obstructionist manners, and so it goes. So the next time you hear some Capitol Hill hack blather about how a particular method employed by the opposition party is inconsistent with the intentions of the Founding Fathers, just remember: they don't know what the heck they're talking about. The idea that the Founding Fathers were all in harmony, that their views were wholly consistent, and that there might be a political stance out there that is contrary to their vision on a whole is ridiculous. They were barely on the same page, so how can one political viewpoint be consistent with their worldview when the Founding Fathers barely agreed on anything?