The Constitution of the United States of America seems to be as misquoted, misused, and misinterpreted for the sake of pushing and supporting various different personal agendas as the Bible is. Politicians are always trying to presume they know what the Founding Fathers would say or think about various different polices which said politicians happen to be against. And it well more often than not the Founding Fathers are grossly misrepresented. Now I am not going to pretend to know what their opinions would be of our modern age but I will clarify some of the ways in which some issues relating to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers have been taken way out of context of their original intently and grossly missuses.
The first item up is the First Amendment. Freedom of Speech and Expression. People really don’t seem to understand what this one means. They seem to think that Freedom of Speech means that you can say anything, anywhere, anytime without enduring any sort of backlash or any repercussion for what you say. But we all know the saying you cannot yell Fire! in a crowded movie theater.
Whenever some Celebrity, TV Personality, or otherwise public figure makes racist or anti-gay remarks, and is than either fired from there job, and/or protested and boycotted by the public the Republicans love to cry fowl, and start waving the 1st amendment around claiming that said individual is having their Freedom of Speech violated.
That is so misconstrued and incorrect I don’t even know where to begin with it.
Freedom of Speech means that an individual can speak their mind, share their opinions, criticize their government, protest, without being persecuted by the law.
But if an individual has a contract with a Network, Cooperation, Franchise, etc.. and then they go on TV and make remarks that could possibly reflect badly upon the institution in which they work for and represent, that institution has the right to fire said individual, or choose not to renew their contract, and it is not a violation of Freedom of Speech to do so.
A violation of Freedom of Speech would be if the cops showed up at your door and than hauled you off to jail for what you said.
Businesses have the right to have policies on how they want their employes to present themselves and conduct themselves. They can enforce dress codes, and say they don’t want you to have any visible tattoos, and they can have codes of conduct in which you have to behave in a way that cannot reflect negatively upon the business of which you are working for.
And while we may not always agree with these policies they do not violate our constitutional rights. People sign the contracts of their own free will knowing the expectations and as such agree to conduct themselves in a certain way. And if they than decide to make questionable comments it is a violation of the contract they signed.
If someone is at work and makes a racist joke to a colleague and the boss overhears it, and he fires that person, that isn’t an infringement upon Freedom of Speech.
If a couple of guys are hanging out in a park and one of them makes a racist joke, and a police officer overhears it and than proceeded to arrest the individual that would be a violation of Freedom of Speech.
In addition if an entertainer makes remarks of which the public dislikes and thus decided to boycott that entertainer, and protest their music, or their movies or whatever it is they do, that is not attacking the entertainers Freedom of Speech, but it is the public exorcising their own Freedom of Expression if they disagree with what you say.
Freedom of Speech does not ensure or protect you from possible social ramification for the things you say, it is meant to protect you from being persecuted by the government for what you say.
The next big can of worms if the 2nd Amemdnemehttps://thechaosinitiative.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpnt. Right to Bear Arms.
A couple of important things about this one, is to remember the context of the period of time in which this amendment was created. For one thing when the Founding Fathers crafted this amendment, they where not toting AK 47’s, they didn’t have automatic weapons and armor piercing bullets or sniper rifles. They had muskets and granted they also did have cannons, but you aren’t going to pull one of those out of your purse, or be totting it around while you stake a stroll through town. I am not going to presume to know just what the Founding Fathers would think of our advanced ways of killing people, and the sorts of weapons people no possess, and if that would have changed their thoughts and opinions regarding the Amendment.
The second thing to remember when this Amendment was created was there was no Standing Army such as we have today, and it was the duty, of each single individual citizen to defend their country against possible outside threat. The 2nd Amendment was originally crafted to give the people the right, and ability to form their own militias in order to defend the country and the government.
And while it does protect individual rights to own guns and the individuals right to self-defense, at the same time the intention of it wasn’t just woohoo guns for everyone just for the sake of having guns. In addition people are using the 2nd Amendment as a sort of free for all and believing that in inherently grants every individual the right to own high-powered military grade weapons (such of which didn’t exist in the time of the Founding Fathers).
Today people use the 2nd Amendment to try and establish a sort of anarchy regarding gun ownership.
And just for the record I am not someone who has any sort of anti-gun agenda or has any radical, or strong opinions regarding gunship. But I do think that things have gotten out of hand. Considering how much the world has changed sense the Founding Fathers, I do think we need to thin outside the Constitution a little bit and use some basic common sense. I don’t think people should be denied their rights to own guns, but I do think that hey, maybe some type of guns every day people don’t really need to have.
People just see the words that they want, and completely lose sight of the context and intention in which it was originally crafted.
The last big issue I am going to tackle is Religion.
Republicans love to talk about how the Founding Fathers where God fearing Christians and that this country was founded upon Christianity.
I cannot verify this because I cannot track down where I first heard it, or who was the one to actually say it, but I know I heard once that the Founding Fathers believed that religion would eventually die out. In addition many of the Founding Fathers where not traditionally Christian. Many of the Founding fathers where actually Deists.
Deism is a belief system which emerged first in the 17th century and become strongly influential in the 18th century, during the time when there was a lot of scientific discovery. Deism seeks to bring science and religion together. Deism follows along the lines of the Clockmaker theory, which is the belief that there was a creator who made the world, but after winding it up, it just lets it run its own course, according to the laws of nature and that the Creator does not intervene in the world. So basically the world was created, made self-sustaining, and after that the Creator washed his hands of the whole thing and went into retirement to allow the world to do what it will upon its own.
I will briefly discuss some of the religious views of the most well known Founding Fathers.
George Washington – The specific nature of his religious belief is hard to pinpoint. He has been called a Deist, as well as a Christian. It is clear that he did believe in some form of a Creator God, but it is not conclusive that he was in fact a follower of the Bible. Washington most commonly named God “Providence” and he very rarely spoke of or mentioned the name of Jesus Christ. He was also known to be tolerant of different religious beliefs.
John Adams – Adams rejected most foundational religious doctrines including the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus. In his youth he became a Unitarian. While John Adams did believe that religion served a role in public life, believed it helped to unite people together in a moral society, he objected to the idea of Religion playing a role in politics. He believed that politics and law should be governed only by reason and common sense.
Thomas Jefferson – Like Washington his beliefs are difficult to pin down, and he was quite private about his beliefs. But it is generally thought that Jefferson was influenced by Deism. He believed in rational, benevolent God, and like Adams he rejected the Divinity of Jesus, and he rejects the miracles of Jesus, as well as the resuscitation and atonement.
Benjamin Franklin – Like Adams and Jefferson, Franklin believed in the idea of Creator God and supported the moral teachings of Jesus but rejected the idea of his divinity. He was influenced by Deism. He put less emphasis upon Christian doctrine and focuses more upon ideas relating to virtue and morality. Franklin did not really care about the specifics of what anyone believed or how they chose to worship and disliked Religious debates regarding Doctrine. His only concern was that a persons beliefs contributed to making them better people. He even stated that he did not think everyone needed religion to be moral and virtuous, but did believe that the majority of the people needed some kind of religious guideline.
Thomas Paine – Paine was Deist. Here are some of his quotes about his beliefs from The Age of Reason:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit
I will states that many of the Founding Fathers where more traditionally Christian, but there is a variety of differing belief between them all, and while it is true that in their own way they all did believe in God, they where hardly the Bible thumpers we see in politics today, and no matter what their religious beliefs, all the Founding Fathers were supporters of religious freedom, and the separation of church and state.
They did not want to create a Christian nature, and they did not seek out to have religion by the basis of law and government. Regardless of their beliefs they strongly supported rational thinking and logic.
Labyrinth of the Mind 