I DON'T KNOW, ZIMBLERZERO, MAYBE WE WOULD LEARN MORE FROM BETO GETTING HIS TEETH CLEANED?
JUST SOME FACTS GATHERED:
United States (U.S.) Founding Fathers
The U.S. Constitution brought together, in one remarkable document, ideas from many people and several existing documents, including the Articles of Confederation and Declaration of Independence. Those who made significant intellectual contributions to the Constitution are called the "Founding Fathers" of our country.
Many of the United States Founding Fathers were at the Constitutional Convention, where the Constitution was hammered out and ratified. George Washington, for example, presided over the Convention. James Madison, also present, wrote the document that formed the model for the Constitution.
Other U.S. Founding Fathers were not there, but made significant contributions in other ways. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was serving as ambassador to France at the time of the Convention. He kept abreast of the proceedings in Philadelphia by carrying on correspondence with James Madison. John Adams, as ambassador to Great Britain, wrote "Defense of the Constitution of the Government of the United States of America." Thomas Paine wrote the influential pamphlet "Common Sense," which immeasurably influenced the philosophy reflected in the Declaration of Independence. One of the U.S. Founding Fathers, Patrick Henry, was initially opposed to the very idea of the Constitution! He wanted to keep the Articles of Confederation, the predecessor to the Constitution. However, when an agreement was made to add a "bill of rights" to the Constitution, Henry fought hard for its ratification.
The term "framers" is sometimes used to specify those who helped "craft" the Constitution. "Founding Fathers" often refers to people who contributed to the development of independence and nationhood. However, the notion of a "framer" or a "Founding Father" is not easily defined. For purposes of this website, "Founding Fathers" are individuals who had a significant impact on the Constitution either directly or indirectly. The following list is by no means complete, but it does identify people who played a large role in the development of the Constitution at this crucial time in American history.
http://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-founding-fathers/
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SNIPPET:
Professor Klarman made four main points about what he calls “constitutional idolatry”. They are (1) that the framers’ constitution represented values that Americans should abhor or at least reject today; (2) that there are parts of the constitution America is stuck with but that are impossible to defend based on contemporary values; (3) that for the most part the Constitution is irrelevant to the current political design of the nation; and (4) that the rights that are protected today are mostly a result of the evolution of political attitudes, not of courts using the Constitution to uphold them.
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snippet:
.....regarding the values of the constitution. Do “the protection of slavery, the restriction of suffrage and so on” mean that “the framers’ constitution represented values that Americans should abhor or at least reject today”? I’m not so sure. It is certainly the case that many of the framers had values Americans today abhor and should and do reject. I tend to support those who argue, however, that most of those values were not, in fact, found in their Constitution (and are certainly not in ours, which contains the Civil War Amendments, among other improvements).
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snippet:
[Tea-partiers] say that the framers’ aim was to check the central government and protect the rights of the states. In fact the constitution of 1787 set out to do the opposite: to bolster the centre and weaken the power the states had briefly enjoyed under the new republic’s Articles of Confederation of 1777.
I think that’s somewhat, but not completely, true. Madison and Hamilton may have wanted to weaken the power of the states. What the Constitution actually does, however, as Hannah Arendt pointed out, isn’t to weaken anyone’s power: what it does is create power. That’s the secret of “separated institutions sharing powers,” and the secret of federalism; by creating many different institutions that matter and that can do things on their own (and/or with the cooperation of or in rivalry with other institutions), the system as a whole is far more energetic and dynamic than any one hierarchy could be. Not to be too sappy, but in this sense “Yes we can” is one of the most important values of the Constitution of the United States of America. We the people can do all these things (Establish justice! Promote the general welfare!), by creating a government that represents us and can do all these things.
http://newrepublic.com/article/77949/do-the-founding-fathers-views-still-matter
http://www.constitutionfacts.com/us-founding-fathers/
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