Our ultra-conservative founding fathers

If you follow politics you’ve probably heard about one of my favorite groups, the Tea Party. The ultra-conservative group validates itself by forging strong bonds with our ultra-conservative founding fathers, and the two groups do have something in common, both come from the late 18^th century. The ultra-conservative group validates itself by attempting to align itself with our founding fathers, and the two groups do have something in common--- both come from the late 18^th century. Despite its historical-based name and the fondness for colonial period apparel, the Tea Party bills itself as the group faithful to the constitutional ideals of our founders.

False.

The Tea Party wants us to return to our nation's roots, but those roots aren’t as ultra-conservative as they’d like you to believe. For starters, our founding fathers were crazy radicals trying some new political experiment. It was a good experiment, but far from preserving the status quo they were doing their best to run from it, king and all. This group of people established a truly new form of government. They wrote a document that was the first of its kind, and they laid the framework for a country the likes of which the world had never seen.

Unlike the Tea Party, the founding fathers were looking forward. The document they wrote and the country they built was one facing the future, not the past. That the Tea Party's views align with our founding fathers only shows how far we have come as a country and how much harm the Tea Party could do to our great nation. It's not 1787 anymore, and the document that our founding fathers created needs to be, as it has been before, malleable enough to address the issues of the present and future.

For example, are terrorism suspects allowed to board airplanes? I don’t know. It's 1787 and the Constitution is silent on both the issue of airplanes and suicide bombers. What about heat-seeking missiles? Are those included in the arms that I’m allowed to keep and bear?

The Constitution as originally penned leaves something to be desired. Imagine a world in which African-Americans count as 3/5ths of a person, women aren’t allowed to vote, and guns are outlawed, the 2^nd amendment, of course, wasn’t part of the original document. Is it that world for which the Tea Party is waxing nostalgic?

The Constitution laid the groundwork for the greatest country that has ever existed, and must respect it. But we should remember that the men who wrote it were well ahead of their time, not far behind it. The Constitution is a living document, and those who would have it be rigid will find themselves living in 1787, a simpler time before the problems of the 21st century, and without the means to address those problems.