Where are the Founders Going?
This image from The New Yorker magazine shows the disgruntled, crestfallen Founding Fathers of our country departing the White House over the Hubris of President Trump. The New Yorker makes no secret of its left-wing stance on most issues. A right-wing magazine could just as easily show the Founders departing the Biden White House, after listening to a strident critique of "Constitutional Originalism" by a brash, young, feminist-Democrat.
She would harp on and on about the importance of a Democracy, over the archaic U.S. Constitution; so the Founders would have walked out. The word "Democracy" occurs perhaps once in the text of the Constitution, because the Founders did not trust it, since it made mob-rule inevitable.
And after all, the public did elect Trump, knowing full well the kind of foul-talking womanizer that he was. He won a resounding victory in 2024. Unlike previous Presidents, Trump never attempted to deceive anyone about the kind of man he is, so everyone knows, "What you see is what you get!" The voters liked that hard-ass, down-to-earth quality about him.
A conscientious American might wonder where the Founding Fathers could go, now that Americans have rebelled against constitutional authority? Should they join the post-Constitutional Democrats, the hubristic Republicans, or neither? Like a law practice or a stock brokerage evicted from a New York high-rise, they would have to sit on the sidewalk with their boxes of personal belongings and brainstorm over what to do next.
The Founders led the defeat of the British Army to gain independence from Britain, then toppled the new nation's own first government, the Articles of Confederation, which did not work. They had to convene in Philadelphia during the hot summer of 1787 and create a miracle nation, a Constitutional Republic with representation. If it has erred, it is only because it has succeeded too well. Americans want to ax the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Before this scenario grows any closer, and since the Founders have been dead for 200-plus years, We the People need to do the brainstorming and extricate ourselves from a national identity that no longer exsts, namely that we are no longer a "United States". You often hear the rhetorical question, "What would Jesus do?" More to the point, what would the Founders do?
Here's a hint: they coaxed the American colonies to step away from the governing authority, Great Britain, to "dissolve the political bands which have connected them . . . and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them." It was a bold, irrevocable move that could have cost them their lives.
The Founders decided they needed their own country. They did not march on city hall to browbeat officials to cave in to them. They did not carry banners, endlessly protest their grievances against the British, or any of that nonsense. They took the initiative and declared independence from Great Britain. When the British did not accept the declaration, they endured a violent struggle against the Establishment, then set up their own government, in order to create something new and enduring, a freedom-loving nation with basic liberties and opportunities.
Our only recourse is to declare independence from each other, let the warring sides of our country step away from each other into their own nations and to assume among the powers of the earth, a separate and equal station on the World scene. Start from scratch with the exisiting resources and go for broke.
Marcus Garvey wrote that "Nationhood is the highest ideal of all peoples." Thomas Jefferson added that "a litttle revolution" is a "good thing" to give us renewal and enduring solutions. Otherwise, we will be like all the other nations dominated by one faction this year, and by the opposing faction the next year.