I'm trying to think of a more polite, less condescending way of saying "You're too young to understand."
I don't mean that you are inadequate in any way. I mean you came along AFTER this deconstruction was in full swing and the mythos of America's Founding were already much in disrepute.
I grew up during the transition. The trashing of the founding myths and the founders themselves was something that hadn't "caught on" locally until I was about college age. It was still highly controversial at the time.
The deconstruction was already widely accepted when you came along. This accounts for our difference in perspective to a large degree.
Are we really so much better in all ways than they?
Perhaps, if you accept that the modern standards of moral and ethical are the pinnacle of human achievement. I'm not so sure. In 200 years how will the people of that time look back on us? Will they see us as barbaric brutes for some aspect of life that is now considered business-as-usual? Is it fair to compare one age to another without taking into account the difference in times and norms?
Does addressing the Founder's faults make things one whit better today? I doubt it.
Am I? Odd, that... I grew up with this way of thinking -- one of the things I decided to keep -- by someone older than you. Someone who brought about the change you lived through, because they were tired of watching the stagnation and the harm it was causing, still used as an excuse not to examine things that were clearly wrong.
And you know, it still hasn't entire caught on. Not beyond acknowledging the things that are just too painfully obvious to deny anymore (see my post to lb_on_teh_cb above). Short story time...
I was a frustrating student. High potential, unpredictable performance. I had a history teacher -- also much older than you -- who decided to, shall we say, break the law of the land a little bit, to try to get me more engaged.
He had no choice over what book he was teaching. That was decided at by the College Board institution, due to it being an AP class. The chapters pertaining to the founders were all quite shallow, because they have to be in order to keep the illusion of their demagoguery alive. The educational institution of the nation decided that was what it wanted to do.
So, clearly, your opinion is alive and well still.
One day he kept me after class, and slipped me a different book in much the same way a spy might slip someone a brief. He told me I couldn't tell anyone -- he would get in all kinds of trouble with the board, tenured or not.
And there I found an actually engaging, meaningful representation of history... which, of course, meant by necessity that the founders (and many other American saints and sinners) looked much more human. Not that I didn't sort of already know that, being the autodidactic type, but it was nice to see a bigger picture of it.
Am I too young to understand your perspective? I don't think that's quite it. I understand it. I just have decided it doesn't work and impedes our betterment. It's not only we youngin's who think so. I was an onery child, and I dropped much of what I was taught, at one point or another, just to try new things on. That is one thing I always kept because I simply have never seen anything good come out of the reverse.
Criticism is patriotic. Criticism means you think there is still more potential. Having no criticism implies that you don't.
Are we better than they were? Unquestionably. What is politics if not the application of ethics to reality? In every single way that you could possibly measure human well-being, behavior, and quality of life, things have improved overall. All of them. How are we not better?
How is it possible to make things better if you are not willing to criticize the present and past? What is it to make things better, than to FIX flaws in your present and past?
If they were perfect demi-gods and put together a perfect anointed union, what is there to fix?
What is wrong with Adams destroying the first amendment within 20 years from the country's birth?
I mean, he was a founder, wasn't he?
I certainly hope they see us as barbaric, 200 years from now. I hope they will understand us in the context of our time, as I do our founders -- it's not comparative, just historical fact. I am better, and so are you, but they were not bad. They were better than the majority of what came before, after all. That's all that truly matters.
But yes, I do hope future people will see our behavior -- my behavior -- as rather unevolved.
Because that will mean we've gotten better still. That will mean people today decided to fix things that were broken. Just like the generation after the founders decided to fix the things they did wrong, etc, etc, etc.
The only useful inspiration that comes from the past is the inspiration to be better in the future.
