Sunday, October 21, 2007

Were the Founding Fathers Democratic Reformers?

The document The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action was written by John P. Roche. He says that the founding fathers were indeed very democratic about their decisions. They were "committed...to working within the democratic framwork, within a universe of public approval." His documents states that the group of people who carried on the job of Constitutionalists were nationalist and some spokesmen of various "parochial bailiwicks." The Constitution had to be fought for in fields of Civil War before principals of the constitution could be brought up. After reading Roche's document, I went over to the document A People's History in the United States, by Howard Zinn. Zinn declares that the Founding Fathers were just rich men who had some direct interest in making a strong federal government. He said four groups were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women and men without property. Although this is just a random fact, I'll add it anyways. On September 19, (my birthday!!!) 1780, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts met and said that eleven leaders of Shays' Rebellion "unlawfully and by force of arms" prevented the process of justice and laws of commonwealth. They were going to meet again a week later to talk of Luke's Day being "indicted." Anyways, Zinn suggests that the Constitutionalists' problem with democracy lay simply in the division of the social classes: the rich and the poor. He says, according to James Madison, that the real problem is that the Founding Fathers had a faction going on and the solution would be to have a more Republic government. Finally, he says that the Foudning Fathers did not want balance in the government, especially not between slaves and masters, people lacking property and property holders, and the Native Americans and the Whites.

I believe that John P. Roche's agument (the "yes" document) was more convincing. Zinn's document has a lot of accusations that couldn't be proved, like that ALL of the founding fathers did like the poor. Many of them had started out in poor families and knew what it was like to be poor. I know that a few of them didn't believe that some of the country's people weren't smart enough to vote or anything, but I believe the fathers still cared for them. They were highly intelligent men who deserve all the credit for making a Constitution that has been effective and run without many glitches for over two-hundred years.