Why on Earth should 'original intent' of the Founders matter in 2016?

Have you ever argued something for years, going back and forth trying to convince other people you're right and they're wrong?

Whether it's conspiracy theories, climate change or immigration, some issues never seem to be settled.

One of the most fundamental arguments these days is about the original intent of the Founding Fathers as to how strong (or weak) the central government should be.

There are folks on the far right who honestly believe the right to keep and bear arms came from a desire by the Founders to keep the government weak.

I find myself arguing this and other points as if they were logical.

But then, all of a sudden, it hit me.

Huh?

What are we doing?

Why does the original intent of the Founders even matter nearly 230 years after the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?


Rome wasn't built on the ideas of Romulus and Remus. England doesn't much care what King Arthur and Robin Hood thought. In fact, I can think of only one country that matters that venerated  its founders the way we do ours.

The Soviet Union.

If Lenin said it. if Marx said it, they believed it and that was that. And for pretty much the entire life of the country, they followed the rules laid down by their founders.

So if it was good enough for the Commies, it's good enough for us?

Did you know that 10 of the first 12 American presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives? Several of them thought slavery was evil, but they didn't free their own slaves even upon their deaths.

In fact, the only president who put in his will that his slaves should be freed was George Washington. Both James Monroe (a slaveholder) and Abraham Lincoln opposed an integrated society in which freed slaves would have equal rights and supported repatriating them to Africa.

James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, was the one who came up with the compromise on population that said slaves should count as three-fifths of a human being.

And we haven't even mentioned women.

Some of the Founders who thought the only people who should vote were gentlemen who owned property.

They weren't all intellectual giants, either. Easily the most intelligent of the Founders was Thomas Jefferson, considered by many to be the greatest mind of the 18th century, but he had very little to do with the Constitution itself.

Under the vague heading of political correctness, modern liberals are writing off Jefferson, Washington and others of the Founders because they owned slaves.

Most of the Founders, particularly the ones from Southern states, were racist by present-day standards. Jefferson believed there was no way black people could function in white society, as did most men at that time.

One would think that's reason enough to dismiss original intent, but how about the words of the Founders themselves. There's not even a suggestion anywhere in their writings that it was handed down from Mount Olympus and should never be changed.

In fact, Jefferson himself said he thought it would last for a generation or two before being changed.

It seems to me that's the only original intent we ought to treat as gospel.