Reply #24: They were just men, but they had a greater impact on history than other pants-putter-oners.

[jobycom]

And that makes them more than men in the effect they had on us.

More than that, though, they are personifications of what this nation was created for, and how it functions best. Most people can't understand abstract ideas like equality, freedom, rights, sacrifice. They serve to illustrate why we founded this nation and why it is different from what came before.

This nation has imperfectly worked for 230 years, and may work a while longer, and the Founders are a personification of what it was that made this place work--as opposed to France after its revolution, for instance. Rather than explaining abstract concepts like representative government, we can just quote a Founder or two. They are a useful touchstone that we can all use to center our arguments. There are times we have to move beyond what they wanted or did because the world is so different, but using them as a focus for that debate keeps us understanding what it was they did that made this country work.

They gave us an adaptable Constitution--the amendments you mention were made possible by the Founders, who know that they hadn't thought of everything, and who hoped the nation would survive long enough to need changes. They fought, defended, and framed this nation in the early years, and they set a workable example. That's why people refer back to them so often, I think.

I lost where I was going. Like you, I've thought about this topic a lot, and reached some of the same conclusions, but a couple are a bit different. They were human, as you say, and we sometimes need to remember that we are dealing with issues they wouldn't have understood. At the same time, they play a role that's bigger than just what you or I play. They personify a lot--maybe beyond what they deserve--but if we lose them as symbols, we may lose the ideals they pointed us towards. You mention that the Constitution was a stronger government than the Articles, but it was still weaker than the monarchy that came before, and more responsive than what came before (in Europe, anyway--we really don't pay enough attention to the contributions of the Iriquois Nation, for instance, on our concepts of freedoms and self government). The Constitution also set up the ideals of equality, even if not living up to them. And it codified the concept of inalienable rights, and although this nation has never perfectly lived up to that ideal--or any ideal--it is still a guiding principle.

The Founders help people who can't think in abstract concepts to remember those things. I don't want to de-deify them to the point where we no longer have a bottom-line justification on those things. Some people need that unarguable final statement. "The Founders fought for freedom of religion," for instance, inspires people when an abstract discussion about inalienable rights just doesn't.

I don't know if that makes any sense.