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154 points

I love how obsessed some Americans are with their founding fathers, it’s adorably weird. I’ve never ever based any of my decisions or opinions on what our first chancellor did or didn’t do and I don’t see fucking why.

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1 point

Because it was a government that was pretty much written up from scratch and went against many of the tenants of European governments at the time, such as a right to free speech, no state religion, etc. It is still based on English Common Law though. It inspired the French revolutionaries though they went in another direction ultimately.

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6 points

It’s an important part of history. The fact that the ideology of some guys that founded our nation a few years back would be viewed as far left extremists nowadays is astonishing. These guys literally left a country and made their own country with radical stuff like freedom of speech, allowing people to come through the borders if they feel unsafe, democracy for the people and by the people and not corporate dirtbags fucking us every chance they get. Not to mention our freedoms keeping on shrinking little by little from the Patriot Act and more legislation to monitor our communications “foR tHe ChiLdRen”.

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7 points

radical stuff like freedom of speech

…for white men.

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36 points

The way it was explained to me, it’s because of a lack of history.

Being a new country, they had effectively no history or culture, unlike the rest of the world. It lead to a desire to develop it’s own identity which lead to elevating the founding fathers to a myth like status to match those of other countries.

It made sense to me, since there are myths involving demigods in different part of the world.

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12 points

Yeah its the same way other post-revolutionary countries idolise their revolutionary leaders, like how the soviets idolised Lenin or Trotsky.

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10 points

They were pretty cool enlightenment thinkers who created the first constitutional republic and were able to muscle out the British Empire. It’s pretty remarkable.

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10 points

Yeah, I know. Now if anyone used their actual intellectual accomplishments as arguments instead of the simple fact that they existed, that might be interesting.

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3 points

Their intellectual accomplishments: rad Personal lives : depends who you’re talking about

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26 points

What they did is remarkable, but they are often treated more like oracles and the constitution like some perfect golden tablets someone dug up in their yard (despite needing significant changes right after it was ratified).

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23 points

Lots of US people will explain to you that the constitution and its amendments are immutable. And when you ask them to repeat that slowly, they’ll just say it louder because you’re the slow one.

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86 points

It would be adorable if it wasn’t dangerous :/ they use the founding fathers and constitution in the same way they use Jesus and the Bible - as a reason to hurt others and stop progress

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46 points

And it’s funny in the wtf way because the founding fathers were against religion being involved in the governing of the nation. They codified that crap! And yet, these idiots keep trying to claim it’s a Christian nation and we need god back in everything.

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18 points

You’re of course correct and I can only be playful about it because of my privileged position of being outside the US. I get that it fucking sucks from the inside.

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-17 points
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Just remember if we fail we will bring everyone down with us. So just because you live outside the US doesn’t mean you can make silly jokes about silly Americans because the people who think that sunscreen bad and founding fathers = gods also vote for people who think democracy is bad and fascism good. So when our democracy fails the whole entire planet will suffer, including you

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11 points

You have no idea, hombre. They’ve slow boiled us like crabs to the point that 50% of the population is bragging that they have a hot tub while not realizing that they’re already cooked.

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Confidently Incorrect

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When people are way too smug about their wrong answer.

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