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Best Founding Father

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Best Founding Father

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This post has 57 Replies | 11 Followers

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No2statism replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 6:33 AM

Probably George Clinton, Peyton Randolph, Hancock, and the confederalist Lee (unless he was the same one who helped crush the whiskey rebellion)

John Dickinson was also cool since he wrote the Articles of Confederation.

Madison and washington were the worst.  Madison was kind of an idiot if he really thought his "if men were angels" argument made sense.  If he didn't think it made sense but was merely using it for deceptive purposes (like when he said the powers of the States would be "numerous and indefinite"), then he was an incredibly skilled liar.

Excellent thread topic, BTW.  

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Marko replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 7:39 AM

Yay, the cult of the founding fathers.


And Marx and Engels, in their fiery genius,
Foresaw the coming sunrise of the Commune.
The road to freedom has been laid out to us by Lenin
And great Stalin is leading us on it!

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Wheylous replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 8:12 AM

I think most people here are over that cult. Though we still probably do hold some respect for them. They hold many of the seeds that grow into the libertarian movement. They just aren't really philosophers that thoroughly hammer out their logic and conclusions.

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SkepticalMetal replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 9:54 AM

Cult? Who said anything about a cult? I'm not sure anybody here is in "the Cult of the Founders" as you put it.

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grant.w.underwood replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 10:16 AM

i dont know if i agree with that Wheylous.  Even Mises didnt 'hammer out [his] logic' to the ultimate conclusion.  They were basically the inventors of it in action not just in theory.  I think all of them had subjectively more important things to fight than the conclusion; the beginning.  There were founding fathers who didnt even want a revolution.  There were founding fathers who wanted an all powerful king. There was slavery, the church, starting a nation with almost nothing but farming, and a need for self defense without having any in place.  Try advocating the 'conclusion', or even reaching that conclusion, when you have a nation who wants to invade you when you have no self defense.  Its easy for us to advocate it because we have the foundation now, but they didnt with enemies at the gate.

Eat the apple, fuck the Corps. I don't work for you no more!
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SkepticalMetal replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 11:07 AM

@andrew cain

Perhaps Thomas Paine is indeed the best founder. I really do admire his views on religion, and it shows a lot of idiocracy going around when only six people attended the man's funeral due to his detestment of Christianity. So much for the USA being a "Christian nation" when most of the Founders were deists.

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Conservative-Libertarian replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 4:54 PM

George Mason.

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Andrew Cain replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 6:06 PM

"Perhaps Thomas Paine is indeed the best founder. I really do admire his views on religion, and it shows a lot of idiocracy going around when only six people attended the man's funeral due to his detestment of Christianity. So much for the USA being a "Christian nation" when most of the Founders were deists."

Only six showed up because the man was a revolutionary till the end. He did not spin apologia for his peers in their new government positions. 

'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael

 

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Luminar replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 6:45 PM

John Adams? Don't make me laugh: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts

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SkepticalMetal replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 7:10 PM

Yes I do admit those are bad, but he did prevent a war with France. He believed in diplomacy.

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MichMAK2 replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 7:55 PM

I am curious as to why George Washington isn't so great. I know he did own slaves, though he eventually concluded that buying/selling humans was an immoral practice. And I know he caved to Hamilton's arguments for the 1st Bank of the United States. But am I missing something more glaring? 

It is probably very easy for us to look back and zero-in on each Founder's flaws. But I still admire them for the basic principles and values of liberty they sought to encourage.

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Kelvin Silva replied on Tue, Sep 18 2012 8:09 PM

Not a founding father but

Henry David Thoreau anyone?

Lets all go to jail guys! Free food and healthcare. Your own living facility is also provided. Kinda like school isnt it?

“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence."
"The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”

http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org

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Aristophanes replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 1:32 AM

Henry David Thoreau anyone?

Uh oh.  Better not mention him here!  He promotes violence against opressors, you can't break the NAP!  It's all about Rand Paul-ing it; get your foot in the door and demand that they slow the implementation of the proposed increases of the oppression that is planned.

Lets all go to jail guys! Free food and healthcare. Your own living facility is also provided. Kinda like school isnt it?

You know he viewed people who paid taxes while they opposed these kinds of things as pansies and insincere hypocrites. 

"Don't support the war [slavery], but still pay taxes to fund [enforce] it?  You might be an idiot."

"The Fed does not make predictions. It makes forecasts..." - Mustang19
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Walden replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 2:15 AM

Thoreau, being essentially anarchist, is purer in his thought than the founders.

>Lets all go to jail guys! Free food and healthcare. Your own living facility is also provided. Kinda like school isnt it?

Half-assed attempt at humor! If you knew even a bit about Thoreau, his philsophy is hard to mistake for any sort of crass utilitarianism.

As for me, I'm not going to waste any effort in being PC. Make the founder's ideals whole, you can't build a movement on a base that you see only as cancerous. It is iconoclasm on behalf of the politically correct.

Or you can convert to Islam, stop wearing deodorant, blog about how property is theft and white cis scum privilege. This is the sort of flinching neuroticism that I've noticed in leftist who perceive, through their red-colored goggles, tradition as something cancerous. Libertarians do this sort of thing too. I don't really understand why beyond having internalized cultural Marxist beliefs.

 

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SkepticalMetal replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 9:28 AM

Green anarchism, huh?

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David B replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 12:39 PM

Wanted to throw in George Mason

 

Wrote VA's Declaration of Rights, which was the precursor to the Bill of Rights, and he lobbied against ratification of the constitution because the central government wasn't sufficiently weak in relation to the states, and there was no Declaration of Rights as part of the Constitution.

One the down side, he was a slave owner, and wanted it protected in the constitution (this may have just been a states rights issue), but also considered it an evil institution, a "Slow Poison"... and supported the immediately banning any importation of new slaves, or the establishment of slavery in any new states.  What an odd juxtaposition of ideas.

Anyways, if there's one thing to cheer for in that time, it was the bill of rights, and the favoring of states rights.

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SkepticalMetal replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 1:31 PM

It really does seem like a lot of the founders had "do as I say, not as I do" personalities. At least the "do what I say" portion of it contained some sensible stuff.

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David B replied on Wed, Sep 19 2012 2:00 PM

I wonder though.  I think like most men, they struggled with behaviors that they'd been brought up in, and perhaps participated in, and then struggled to understand how to handle things or rationalize them when it became obvious that they were wrong.

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