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Originally Posted by Mr Mephisto
It's almost insulting?!
Does that mean Presidents and Cheif Justices of the past (say 150 years) are any less special? Are their opinions not just as valid? Or do you think that modern America is just the same as the British colonies of the 18th century?
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Lots of others are quoted although I don't see it here a lot but I do at several other boards I frequent. Men like Lincoln, FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Oliver Wendall Holmes, and JFK, just to name a few, come to mind. All are often quoted in the heat of political debate and carry the same relative weight of some of the Founding Fathers.
I think it also has to do with the relative numbers too. I am not sure that at other single time and place in history were so many intellectual giants assembled in one place. You can go back through history and pick men by the ones, twos and threes but not by the dozens. If numbered out the Founding Fathers are some 3 dozen, give or take, all in one time and place. Oh sure, most do not get quoted and remain in the shadows behind the names of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, and Adams but that does not lessen them.
This is a group of men whose ideals in government were so revolutionary that while the land their country inhabits is young on the stage of the world, the government they founded is one of the oldest in existance today. The document they wrote is flexible enough to deal with all but the most space age of issues and has only been amended 17 times since originally being adopted. They were great visionaries.
Perfect? Hardly. I guess Washington was as close you could get in that group and even he was a slave holder. However, he was above reproach for the day and that is what we need to remember. Who of us can predict what ordinary everyday thing in our lives will come to be reviled by future generations and cause us to be judged as less than we are seen as today?