The Founding Fathers
An interesting bunch of mainly wealthy Englishmen who happened to be around at that time.
Were they any brighter or able than any other such group? I’d say not.
From my perspective:
They had a range of mainly upper middle class professions such as lawyers, doctors, scientists, businessmen etc.
They had a range of religious views – some being atheists.
They had a range of attitudes and politics.
Some – like Tom Paine – might not even be considered to be one of the founding fathers.
They were all products of their times.
They were all middle-class white males and hence not representative of either their society or the present-day society.
They were all products of their environment with all the cultural baggage entailed – racism, slavery, attitudes to the poor, misogyny.
They were part of a rebellion in a sparsely populated new land.
Their thinking represented these things.
They produced an exceptional document in the Declaration of Independence.
Does it still hold water? Well aspects of it do.
Those founding fathers did a good job for the time and circumstances. But what was written 250 years ago for totally different times cannot possibly still apply to present-day circumstances.
We live in a modern age of computers, fast travel, mass media, television, the internet, pluralism, equality of gender and race, machine guns, stable government, no government waiting to pounce………. What pertained to life in 1776 does not always apply now. A good example is guns.
We have to move with the times or become fossilised.