i mean, i agree the conservatives have shown they contain zero empathy for anyone anywhere except themselves.
but
wasnt the US constitution written for and by a bunch of rich, land-owning white guys? i guess im surprised what rights any non-landowners currently have. lucky us!
That’s a bit over-simplistic. If the founders had simply wanted to swap out rule by British monarchy and oligarchs with themselves, they could have done a lot more to enable that. The Constitution allowed the States to set voting rights as they liked, and there was more diversity than you’d expect. 60 percent of white men were eligible to vote in 1776, and while that’s obviously not exactly good, it’s not an attempt to establish a blatant neo-nobility. In 1789, Georgia abolished the property requirement. Vermont granted voting rights to all men in 1791. Property restrictions were gradually eliminated over the next few decades, and by 1856, property ownership was no longer a requirement in any state.
Given the original framework of the United States as a somewhat loose coalition of operationally independent states, it would have been seen as an overreach for the Constitution to mandate how states could distribute voting rights. The federal government wasn’t meant to play a super significant part it the average person’s day-to-day life.
One does have to wonder, though, if the main reason they avoided trying to set up a new aristocracy is because they were afraid of what would happen if they did. They had just convinced a whole lot of people to take up arms against the king, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see those same people turning against a new batch of American aristocrats very quickly.
For sure; the founders were an ideologically diverse group of people with a lot of different and conflicting agendas. That said, the influence of some sincere belief in humanist Enlightenment philosophy is impossible to deny, even if it was certainly restricted in its scope. Many of the founders very much intended to abolish slavery, for instance, but it became clear that the Southern states would refuse to join if that was made an absolute condition. There is an alternate universe where two distinct countries were created rather than accepting the continuation of slavery as a compromise, though it’s hard to say if that’s really a better world or not.
My main point is that it’s somewhat ahistorical to speak of the founders a cohesive ideological group at all. “They” weren’t collectively avoiding are seeking much of anything in common; the final Constitution was the result of a lot of very heated debates and compromises.
i mean, i agree the conservatives have shown they contain zero empathy for anyone anywhere except themselves.
but
wasnt the US constitution written for and by a bunch of rich, land-owning white guys? i guess im surprised what rights any non-landowners currently have. lucky us!
That’s a bit over-simplistic. If the founders had simply wanted to swap out rule by British monarchy and oligarchs with themselves, they could have done a lot more to enable that. The Constitution allowed the States to set voting rights as they liked, and there was more diversity than you’d expect. 60 percent of white men were eligible to vote in 1776, and while that’s obviously not exactly good, it’s not an attempt to establish a blatant neo-nobility. In 1789, Georgia abolished the property requirement. Vermont granted voting rights to all men in 1791. Property restrictions were gradually eliminated over the next few decades, and by 1856, property ownership was no longer a requirement in any state.
Given the original framework of the United States as a somewhat loose coalition of operationally independent states, it would have been seen as an overreach for the Constitution to mandate how states could distribute voting rights. The federal government wasn’t meant to play a super significant part it the average person’s day-to-day life.
One does have to wonder, though, if the main reason they avoided trying to set up a new aristocracy is because they were afraid of what would happen if they did. They had just convinced a whole lot of people to take up arms against the king, and it doesn’t take much imagination to see those same people turning against a new batch of American aristocrats very quickly.
For sure; the founders were an ideologically diverse group of people with a lot of different and conflicting agendas. That said, the influence of some sincere belief in humanist Enlightenment philosophy is impossible to deny, even if it was certainly restricted in its scope. Many of the founders very much intended to abolish slavery, for instance, but it became clear that the Southern states would refuse to join if that was made an absolute condition. There is an alternate universe where two distinct countries were created rather than accepting the continuation of slavery as a compromise, though it’s hard to say if that’s really a better world or not.
My main point is that it’s somewhat ahistorical to speak of the founders a cohesive ideological group at all. “They” weren’t collectively avoiding are seeking much of anything in common; the final Constitution was the result of a lot of very heated debates and compromises.