We hear this call from the "con"servative media and politician, that we need to get back to our founding principles.
Unfortunately for them, the founding principles side with the progressives. In previous posts, I have pointed out that Thomas Paine wanted a social safety net, like social security.
Now I have come across a law written in 1798 passed by Congress and signed by the President. This law named, An act for the relief of sick and disabled seamen, was written by the authors of the Constitution, so they didn’t need the CATO Institute or the Heritage foundation to interpret the founding document.
§ 3. That it shall be the duty of the several collectors to make a quarterly return of the sums collected by them, respectively, by virtue of this act, to the secretary of the treasury ; and the president of the United States is hereby authorized, out of the same, to provide for the temporary relief and maintenance of sick, or disabled seamen, in the hospitals or other proper institutions now established in the several ports of the United States, or in ports where no such institutions exist, then in such other manner as he shall direct:Provided, that the moneys collected in any one district, shall be expended within the same. So out of the said tax, the federal government provided healthcare for the sick and disabled seamen. Sounds like socialized insurance.
The money collected from EVERY sailor helped the sick and/or disabled seamen.
§4. That if any surplus shall remain of the moneys to be collected by virtue of this act, after defraying the expense of such temporary relief and support, that the same, together with such private donations as may be made for that purpose, (which the president is hereby authorized to receive,) shall be invested in the stock of the United States, under the direction of the president; and when, in his opinion, a sufficient fund shall be accumulated, he is hereby authorized to purchase or receive cessions or donations of ground or buildings, in the name of the United States, and to cause buildings, when necessary, to be erected as hospitals for the accommodation of sick and disabled seamen.
Also according to this act, the President had the auhority to purchase land and build hospitals to care for the sick.
§ 5. That the president of the United States be, and he is hereby, authorized to nominate and appoint, in such ports of the United States as he may think proper, one or more persons, to be called directors of the marine hospital of the United States, whose duty it shall be to direct the expenditure of the fund assigned for their respective ports, according to the third section of this act; to provide for the accommodation of sick and disabled seamen, under such general instructions as shall be given by the president of the United States for that purpose, and also, subject to the like general instructions, to direct and govern such hospitals, as the president may direct to be built in the respective ports
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There you have it. Our founding principles were to care for the sick through taxation of private industry. Now I am sure there will be those on the right proclaiming that not EVERYONE was covered under this law. This may be true, but the trade and shipping industry was a critical part of our nation’s economy in 1798. If many sailors got sick or injured the Captain of the ship couldn’t make money, thus cripple our economy due to lack of trade.
The real point is, did our founders believe in a federal government mandate to insure the sailors. Yes! Did the federal government collectively take care of the sick through taxation? YES! Let's push for single payer in this Country, and stick to our FOUNDING PRINCIPLES!
n/t
Don’t stoop to the level of constitutional original-ism. It’s asinine enough already hearing it from the ignorant right without dealing with the gotcha!-left spouting it too.
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p>The reason the Constitution is an organic document is because they recognized that culture and society isn’t a constant. Trying to frame law in such an anachronistic lens does NOTHING for USA2011.
He’s only arguing that the same generation had an idea of how to take care of people. Are you seriously arguing somehow single-payer requires slavery? I assume you also got the memo regarding the 13th amendment. I for one totally agree with his main premise that the tea party crowd is in desperate need of a few history lessons.
that the framers of the constitution are to be celebrated and loved for their forethought, bravery, and brains. However, they are not infallible and “because the founding fathers would have wanted it that way” is never a sound reason to justify something.
…against people who claim to revere everything about the founders.
There are plenty of very practical and modern reasons to enact single-payer health insurance.
The post is pointing to the GOP’s illogical love affair, of late, with the Founding Fathers. Bill Maher said it well:
His claim as to what the founding fathers would have thought of the tea party is based in as much speculation as what the tea party thinks the founders would have thought of them.
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p>There’s no way we can decide how people who lives hundreds of years ago would have thought of contemporary politics. Everything they said and did was in the context of the world they lived. Anyone who subscribes to the idea that personality is based on nurture rather than nature must recognize that.
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p>Anyways, it’s a waste of time argument because there isn’t any actual way to have resolution.
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p>I think Maher, nastiness aside, is rather on to something: The founding fathers risked their lives and livelihoods to bring us a Republic and to make a system in which the Republic could stabilize and thrive and this is what is made of it?? What they said and did was in the context of making a better world for future generations… i.e., us. That some of us, that is to say the Tea Party organizers, are stirring up anger and vitriol for their own, short-term and entirely self-serving, interests, would, I daresay, horrify the lot of them.
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p>I think that they would certainly have been disdainful of the cavalier and anti-intellectual bullying coming from the direction of the Tea Party. I think they also would have smoked out the Tea Partiers as a group of whiners just thinking about themselves and not about the future. I further think that they, some of whom actually having planned and attended the original tea party, would turn their backs on some who are trying to, today, usurp the legacy of the founding fathers.
As Christopher noted, I don’t think the diarist is in any way arguing originalism here.
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p>Instead, he’s given us another good example of how the Tea Party’s narrative of early American history is fundamentally flawed. They ludicrously believe that all of framing generation agreed on everything, and gave us clear answers resolving contemporary disputes. They also believe that the framing generation did not believe in the provision of social welfare and regulation, which is plainly false.
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p>These things need to be corrected, or else the myth of the framing generation takes over the reality.
…from all the reading I’ve done on this era (and I’ve done quite a bit) the two things this generation WAS nearly unanimous on were liberal ideals – namely, separation of church and state and the need for public education.
Remember, they were borne of an Empire that had wonderful people like Oliver Cromwell celebrated far and wide.
Given the experience of established Churches in most of the Colonies, the Founders realized the danger of a national Church.
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p>At the State level, the early Baptists and Methodists worked successfully to disestablish Congregationalists in New England and Anglicans in Virginia. Thanks to early evangelists (and widespread deism among Eighteenth Century Americans) early frontier States like Kentucky and Ohio took separation of church and state for granted.
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p>Your Cromwell reference is somewhat of a non sequitur, alas. The dynamics of his Commonwealth were primarily cultural in America, where the Puritan ethos obtained in New England, and the Cavalier culture triumphed in the coastal areas of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas.
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p>Intellectually, to the degree that he established the primacy of Parliament over King in the Seventeenth Century, he was a hero to the Founders a century and a half later.
the mind set, that the founders were in NO WAY libertatrians who would object to social safety nets.
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p>To bring up slaves is a straw man.
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p>Slavery was CONSTITUTIONAL until the 13th and 14th Amendment.
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p>This shows a LAW written and passed by the founders of this Country that protected private citizens’ health.
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p>This is very similar to our FICA (medicare) tax we all pay into.
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p>HERE IS THE DEBATE REGARDING THIS BILL:
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p>http://www.scribd.com/doc/2917…
been amended to make this LAW unconstitutional, as we needed to do for slavery.
it is the most striking piece of evidence to the argument that just because the founding fathers said/did/thought of something doesn’t mean it’s right.
…to advocate for legislation and try to GET a majority of legislators to ultimately agree with you. That’s all Ray is doing here, though his audience is fellow activists to whom he’s trying to make a salient point.
John Adams signed the LAW…so the majority agreed.
You have an IT infrastructure which can evaluate the useful contributions of peasants to the globalist oligarchy. 14 to 40 only get care and only if they live in the UN approved green zones of sustainable development.
I think it is a mistake to argue for the social safety net or really most any other policy based on arguments what the founders would have thought about this or that. All you get is a lot of lawyers and politicians doing bad history. Ray’s post may be a case in point. Thomas Paine refused to attend the constitutional convention and was hardly a Federalist. It’s a mistake, I think, to cite his views as representative of the views of the founders. And the Act of 1798 was not really novel–an act of Parliament in the reign of George II similarly provided for sick and disabled seamen out of tax revenues collected for the purpose. (See Naval Encyclopedia 477 (1881)). So it seems to me to be the exception that proves the rule.
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p>TedF
I think that Ray was trying to refute bad history on the part of the Right.
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p>The Act of 1798 and the Northwest Ordinances of 1784 and 1787 ground the concept of affirmative government for the common good in American political and legal history. (That the Act of 1798 was grounded in an earlier Act of Parliament reinforces his case – the Founders considered themselves conservators of English liberties and values.)
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p>Not that the Right is unique in citing false facts as history.
I think Ray was doing two things. First, he was refuting the right’s version of history, which is great. Then he was offering up his own version of history, which is where I get off the bus.
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p>TedF
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p>While, judged as political copy, the last sentence is rhetorical overreach, the context makes calling it “his own version of history” somewhat of a stretch.
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p>I don’t think it a mistake at all. The mistake is in hewing too closely, to the detriment of our own powers of discernment, to a reflexive fealty. But as it is our governing document it, if allowed to govern, ought to be read and understood in both it’s role now and it’s context then. The founders were pretty radical men and they made some truly radical decisions and changes: which changes you or I (it is hoped) will never be faced with… But absent the challenges they faced, our decisions ought to be informed by their (often more) informed views. I for example, never having been in combat, would hesitate to make changes to, or reflexively discount editors of, the Army manual for basic training… I simply don’t have the experience to understand it and, if required to change would first ask ‘who wrote it as it is?’ and ‘why did they write it that way?’
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p>But, truly, it’s not even that complex: the Tea Party simply has a conception of the document that’s demonstrably wrong. The arguments they make are wrong and in fealty to a misperception of the Founding Fathers words and deeds. The hyperbole of RayM aside, I thought the essential thrust of his post was to, pretty comprehensively, display the utter vapidity of the Tea Parties understanding of the constitution and the world in which it was created, rather than to posit a new set of principles in opposition to their view. If any premise is wrong, it’s the Tea Parties premise that the Constitution forbids group health insurance.
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p>RayM is merely Inigo Montoya pointing out, “You keep using that word… I don’t think it means what you think it means.” With proof.