( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Crossposted at Daily Kos and progressiveelectorate.com
Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past ~ George Orwell, 1984
In the face of the revisionist historians on the right who would have you believe that Jesus was more important to the founding and building of America than our founding fathers, or that our founding fathers were in some way actually Religious and Fiscal Conservatives, I submit this theory for your approval.
The founding fathers were progressives
The Tories who supported the King of England were Conservatives.
If the Founding Fathers were Conservatives, we would still have a King.
Conservatives are never revolutionary, not unless that revolution is intended to halt progress and go backwards to the natural state of power in a nation.
Thus, conservatives conserve power and progressives seek change and progress.
more below the fold
Any decently educated student of history knows this, but there is nothing the GOP and Corporatists will not pervert to suit their agenda as long as it helps them maintain their strangle-hold on wealth and power.
Our founding fathers knew the dangers of monarchy and the power of a religion controlled state, they knew the danger of a head of state who governed under the Aegis of Divine Authority, they knew the dangers of a nation that can not stand up to the power of Big Business run amok or another multi-national power (be it a nation or Corporation), and they knew the dangers of unlimited power in the hands of one man, or many men, if they are not heldd in check by the rule of law.
They knew this because the believed in change and individual liberty, but also in the rule of law and social justice.
Therefore, IF the Founding Fathers were Conservatives, the following would be true of America from her founding on to today.
1. The State Religion would be Christianity. There would be no seperation of church and state.
2. We would have never rebelled against the rule of the British empire, rather we would have made the best of it so long as it profitted the wealthiest and most powerful among the founding fathers.
3. We would still have the Articles of Confederation instead of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We would have stuck to the first form of limited Government, and would have been defeated in any subsequent wars becuase of our inability to rally behind a centralized Federal authority.
4. Slavery would have been codified in our society and would still exist as of today.
5. Instead of a Union of States under one nation we would have a confederacy of nation states, as each new state would demand their own soverignty above aq national soverignty. America would be more like Switzerland or the Roman Republic.
6. There would be no additions to the Constitution at all and no new agencies other than those written into the original Articles of Confederation/Constitution, which would be read as a Bible and not open to any interpretations other than the stated words as applied therein.
7. No new taxes EVER, which would lead to a weak and powerless nation in the face of a changing world.
8. No regulations of any kind not already included in the AoC/Constitution, which would lead to a Big Business world run amok which could overpower a weak, decentralized Government.
9. Any act of revolution against England or American colonial authority would be considered an act of terrorism, and would be cruelly and violently crushed.
10. If, for some reason the American colonists did rebel against British rule, upon victory General George Washington would have accepted the crown that was offered him, and we would have a Constitutional Monarchy today.
These are only my own dabbles in revisionist history, I am no expert at making things up like Newt Gingrich or the Texas Board of Education, but I hazard to guess that, if our nation’s founding fathers were Conservatives, we would have a scientific culture that is frozen in the 18th Century, socialism would have been banned 100 years before it was invented, Jesus would be on the face of every dollar and Germany would have defeated our weak and unorganized Army in WWII.
Those who wish to distort the truth and the very fabric of our national heritage do so for one purpose only, to maintain power. Despie all of the rationales of the supposedly learned amongst the Conservative right wing of America, the maintenence and Conservation of power in the hands of the weealthy and politically elite is the purpose of modern day Conservativism. In order to maintain that power, Conservatives would lie, terrorize the population, propogate fear and distort history itself.
In order to save us from facism, Conservatives would become fascists themselves.
In order to save us from Big Brother, Conservatives would have Big Brother save us.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
and add to that
The Founding Fathers were Conservatives
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not as some would prefer it to be in order to justify their political agendas.
they left us documents which transcend the time and the specific battle they fought. The principles we’re founded on were both a reaction to the tyranny of being a colony of the English, subject to monarchy, and a system that only took from us, and the enlightenment, which was and is the accumulated rights of man, as Thomas Paine calls them. The founding fathers lived in their time but saw beyond it. They also were a product of their time. The documents they left us are universal enough that they are neither conservative or liberal. They are the structure not the politics.
Surely we are capable of realizing that what they left was a cornerstone a foundation of principles codified into law..the laws that no one owns the hard fought rights of we the people. Progress is not static and we move through time we are capable of interpreting right from wrong, of working for a more perfect union, of realizing that we build on the foundation laid. The morality is not specific it is not grounded in the 1800’s or our time it’s the same as it’s always been, the rights of man. That means all of us all humanity, we are all equal, both legally and spiritually.
The Law is King ——-Thomas Paine