Did our Founding Fathers have it right when...?

Question

...they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances.

Answer 1

Yes this was what was intended from the start .
They knew that we are all different and that states would determine how best to serve the common good of the people through the representatives elected .
To bad we did not end up with a tolerant gay state or one that allowed drug use or gambling or prostitution . We ended up with federal laws that do not allow 10% of the population to freely exercise the right to smoke pot .We do not allow except in one state the right of a woman to use her body to provide sexual gratification for money . But do require that in order for a marriage to be legal a woman must consent to sexual intercourse with her husband . If she stops providing him carnal pleasure it is grounds for divorce.
So we can as men marry a woman for sexual purposes but we can not buy sexual favors from a woman .
Anyhow the rights of the people and states have been over shadowed by a strong central federal government that has made the laws of the land applicable in all states .
California I think wants legal medical pot but federal law does not allow this .I wonder why and how states and people lost the right to govern themselves .

Answer 2

It sounds really good in theory. in practice however its not. Even during our Founding Fathers time it was very difficult for them completely avoid entanglements with other nations. These days its impossible. In the world where global economy is king, you'll have to get involved with someone at some point. You may as well do it on your own time and your own terms.

Answer 3

Look at the current Commander in Chief and read about the Founding Fathers, answers its self.

Answer 4

The means to real peace. No government admits any more that
it keeps an army to satisfy occasionally the desire for conquest.
Rather the army is supposed to serve for defense, and one invokes the
morality that approves of self-defense. But this implies one's own
morality and the neighbor's immorality; for the neighbor must be
thought of as eager to attack and conquer if our state must think of
means of self-defense. Moreover, the reasons we give for requiring
an army imply that our neighbor, who denies the desire for conquest
just as much as does our own state, and who, for his part, also keeps
an army only for reasons of self-defense, is a hypocrite and a
cunning criminal who would like nothing better than to overpower a
harmless and awkward victim without any fight. Thus all states are
now ranged against each other: they presuppose their neighbor's bad
disposition and their own good disposition. This presupposition,
however, is inhumane, as bad as war and worse. At bottom, indeed, it
is itself the challenge and the cause of wars, because, as I have
said, it attributes immorality to the neighbor and thus provokes a
hostile disposition and act. We must abjure the doctrine of the army
as a means of self-defense just as completely as the desire for
conquests.

And perhaps the great day will come when people,
distinguished by wars and victories and by the highest development of
a military order and intelligence, and accustomed to make the
heaviest sacrifices for these things, will exclaim of its own free
will, "We break the sword," and will smash its entire military
establishment down to its lowest foundations. Rendering oneself
unarmed when one had been the best-armed, out of a height of feeling
-- that is the means to real peace, which must always rest on a peace
of mind; whereas the so-called armed peace, as it now exists in all
countries, is the absence of peace of mind. One trusts neither
oneself nor one's neighbor and, half from hatred, half from fear,
does not lay down arms. Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice
rather perish than make oneself hated and feared -- this must someday
become the highest maxim for every single commonwealth.

Our liberal representatives, as is well known, lack the time
for reflecting on the nature of man: else they would know that they
work in vain when they work for a "gradual decrease of the military
burden." Rather, only when this kind of need has become greatest
will the kind of god be nearest who alone can help here. The tree of
war-glory can only be destroyed all at once, by a stroke of
lightning: but lightning, as indeed you know, comes from a cloud --
and from up high.

(translation by W. Kaufmann, transcribed by T. Rourke. File archived
at Lord Etrigan's Nietzsche site...
http://members.aol.com/lrdetrigan/index4.html Accept no imitations!)

Answer 5

ponder this though.. did the founding fathers think that it would be possible for someone on the other side of the world would be able to push a button and destroy the world? or at least a small country? I doubt it...they were smart but not psychic.

Answer 6

In their time yes. The world has changed in the past couple of centuries.

Answer 7

They were a pretty saavy bunch, and didn't get much wrong.

They did grossly overestimate our ability not to screw it up, though.

Answer 8

Yes, they had it right. More than they ever thought they did.

Answer 9

history would suggest they had it right and that we have messed it up a good bit.

Answer 10

Stupid founding fathers...