Today is Constitution Day, the day 223 years ago that the Founding Fathers signed the Constitution at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, and started the process of ratification of the sacred document that we have lived under for 221 years!
There is great admiration and respect for the Founding Fathers, but the ideas of the Founding Fathers have been hijacked by many groups that claim to understand what the Founding Fathers believed and put into effect in 1787!
Many would have you believe that the Founding Fathers set up a rigid document that was not meant to be adaptable to changing times!
Many promote the belief that the Founding Fathers were setting up a Christian nation, rather than a nation with religious freedom!
Many want us to believe that the national government was meant to be secondary to states rights!
There is so much misunderstanding of what the promoters of the Constitution intended, and many believe that they would support the intentions of today’s social conservatives and the Tea Party Movement!
All of the above assumptions are totally false, as the Founding Fathers intended for a broad interpretation of the Constitution, as shown in Article 1, Section 8, the Elastic Clause; promoted a separation of church and state; and had no intention of promoting states rights which would defy the Constitution’s intention of one united nation! They were not narrow minded and bigoted, as social conservatives and Tea Party Movement people have proved to be!
The Founding Fathers had a forward looking view of the future, not the narrow minded, negative view of many today who keep on distorting the reality of the Founding Fathers and the Constitution! We must not allow these negative forces to destroy the true meaning of the Founding Fathers and the fantastic document they bequeathed to us!
If my memory serves me right, we tried giving states supreme rights over national government before and it failed horribly. It was called the articles of confederation! Our fore fathers made the constitution to have a more powerful national government. Sorry Beck and Hannity but it’s true.
Chris, you are ABSOLUTELY correct! The Articles of Confederation was a miserable failure, and nearly brought the country down to dissolution! If the South had successfully seceded from the nation during the Civil War, the country would not be what it has become, the beacon of freedom in the world! When politicians promote states rights, they are promoting treason against our national history of a constantly more democratizing society!