Our Founding Principles

I’m often puzzled by the opinion on the right, that we need to steer our country back to our founding principles. One of my biggest complaints about our country is that it is too similar to the 1780s version of the US. I want change. I want a progressive future. I want the US to be BETTER, not the SAME. I mean, what has changed?

Racism is still here. More Black and Latino people are in prison than white people. Most people in positions of power (both in the government and business) are white. Mexicans are routinely ridiculed and discriminated against. Southern hicks are still the racist morons they have always been. Sure, we may not have slaves anymore, but non white people are still often treated as second class citizens. How is that different than when this country was founded?

Women are still working their way up. The fact that we still brag about a woman in any kind of power shows how little we’ve come as a country. All people were supposed to be created equal, remember? It’s clearly not happened. Look at the gay marriage issue. This country is clinging to 1780s logic and information and bigotry. Just like when this country was founded.

Our country was founded by smart people. I’m not talking about the average person at the time. Most of the average people were farmers and settlers. But the founders, the ones that created our form of representative republic, they were smart. They had degrees. They read those book thingies. The average person was ignorant. I don’t mean that as a slight. I’m saying they didn’t have the chance at education. There was no public school system. Private schools were expensive. Skills were passed down from parent to child. Look at our education scores now. The average person is still ignorant. And I DO mean this as a slight. We have all this opportunity, yet not enough people are taking it. Rick Santorum called President Obama an “elitist” for wanting everyone to go to college. Back then, they had an excuse. We don’t anymore. Sure we have more college graduates, but we also have more poor people having more uneducated kids. Has our average intelligence really changed since the country was founded?

Oh. On a slightly related note, America is NOT a Christian Nation. Thomas Jefferson made his own bible that took out all of the miracles. The Pledge of Allegiance didn’t say “One nation under god” until 1954. Our money didn’t say “In god we trust” until 1957. In fact, both of these changes occurred to fight communism. It had nothing to do with our foundation. In fact, the separation of church and state was added specifically to keep America secular. The only mention of religion in the Constitution is “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office”. They did this so that there would never be an official religion of the US, as many other nations at the time had. This also meant that every religion would be treated equally.

Besides, our nation now has MORE religious tolerance, not less. In the 1800s there was sectarian violence between Christian sects. The Baptists hated the Methodists who hated the Lutherans. It wasn’t until recently that they converged into “general Christianity”. Sure more and more atheists are coming out of the proverbial closet, but that doesn’t mean religious freedom has been impeded IN ANY WAY. Religious people are not persecuted. They are allowed to practice whatever religion they want. If they have certain clothes of facial hair that they have to have, their employers must accept it. Contrary to a recent news story where an atheist shoe company’s products were 10 times as likely to be “lost” in the mail if it said “atheist” on the box than if it didn’t.

This is the most important point. Equality. Our nation WAS founded on equality. Well not for blacks or women. But all white men were created equally. Oh. Not for the Irish either. But all the other white men were created equally. Have we strayed from that? We still have biases. We still prevent certain groups from being equal. Ironically, it’s usually the same people that want to bring us back to our “roots” that want to prevent equality. That’s a little hypocritical, don’t you think? Should we really go back to our “founding principles” and only let white non Irish men run everything?

What about taxes? That’s the Tea Party’s main thing. Well in the 1950s, the top tax rate was 90%. Think of that. If you were in the top tier tax bracket NINETY PERCENT of your income went to taxes. Now, it’s 35%. Shall we go back to 90% to get back to “founding principles”?

So conservatives. Calm the fuck down. If our nation stayed the same, it would become stagnate. We need to move towards the future, not cling to the past. Our nation was built on brilliant ideas. Those ideas have evolved over time. We need to keep evolving, not stop. We need more progression, not less. We need more freedom. We need to let science lead the way because contrary to what you’ve been told, science was a founding principle.