“We’re the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, and We’re A-OK with Everything Happening Right Now!”
Greetings, fellow Americans. It’s us! The Framers of the U.S. Constitution! We’ve come because there’s been a great deal of debate, particularly at the Supreme Court, as to what our intentions were when we composed and enacted the highest law of the land between 1787 and 1789. How do we feel, many have asked, about our work being interpreted the way it is nowadays? Especially if those ways, directly or indirectly, undermine the very freedoms we fought and died for to defend and preserve? Bottom line: It’s cool. Seriously.
We have our reasons. Let’s start with the obvious. We’ve all been dead for hundreds of years. What difference does it make to us? In addition to having no way of knowing how things would carry out over the centuries, we had little to no interest in anticipating them. Much like your current elected officials, we knew we weren’t long for this world when we drafted the thing, so what reason did we have to make it foolproof? Let alone truly egalitarian.
We were also wealthy, landed gentry with legions of slaves doing our bidding for us. If anything, systemic inequalities were even more woven into the fabric of our society than they are in yours. Do you really think we’d draft something that would take that kind of power out of our hands, as well as those of our posterity? A fair number of us who attended the Constitutional Convention didn’t even want you to vote. Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry went so far as to say, “the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy.” Is it any coincidence that the concept of “gerrymandering” took its name from that very man?
Plutocracy and minority rule determined by economic might has been a thing since the dawn of human civilization. Nothing about the American Revolution changed that. If you think the founding of a new nation “conceived in liberty” or whatever branding you want to affix to it was truly intended to upend it, you’ve got another thing coming. That “thing” will probably be further restrictions on your fundamental human rights, and an ever-growing wage gap swallowing more of you by the day.
Much like us, your representatives know they won’t be around the experience the worst consequences of their regressive actions. They won’t live to see the cataclysms of the climate crisis. Why should they preserve the right to vote when doing so threatens their position of power? And what’s bodily autonomy? Just as it was in our time, the representatives pushing these draconian abortion restrictions view women as little more than chattel, kept only for the purposes of breeding. As for the men, don’t you have demanding, high-stress jobs to worry about? Do you really want to jeopardize access to affordable healthcare by failing to fall in line like the good little worker drones you are?
Clearly your present-day elected officials feel the same way about all this as we did, so who are you to question it? Leave the analysis to us, and our present-day forebears in the Republican Party. They’re doing God’s Work, especially when it comes to the erosion of the separation of church and state, and the fascist theocracy that’s slowly manifesting as a result. We couldn’t be prouder. God bless (and repress) America! Framers out!