The Founders

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under historiography |

I was talking with a friend of mine last evening about a book he’s reading.  Unfortunately, the title escapes me, but it is one of those books that tries to analyze the current political situation in the context of historical events.  Generally speaking I’m put off by this sort of anachronism, but it did get me thinking about something.

 While comparing the current state of affairs with the state of affairs in the past, we will almost always wind up projecting the spirit of our age onto the past, strangling it.  For example, it is difficult for us to understand how anyone could have accepted slavery, yet many of the founders did.  But the moment we attempt to judge them from within our own context, we do the past a disservice.  Our age and theirs is, in many ways, apples and oranges.

Still, I do think there is use in considering the current state of affairs in the context of the past.  For example, we can talk about how some of the founders railed against slavery.  But when we consider modern civil rights legislation, rather than trying to fit our views into the founders, we ought to look at what the founders did and follow the line from there to here.  In other words, we consider how we got to the place where we have a relative degree of racial equality, while recognizing that there are vast differences in the arguments that the founders made and our arguments today.

Do some principles remain timeless?  Certainly.  Can we connect the principles of our day with the principle of an earlier age?  We can, but we must be diligent about making sure we understand the whole argument that was made in the past, as well as how we got here from there.

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