Favorite Founding Father?

Who's your favorite Founding Father? It's hard for me to pick, so make your pick from the choices below!

he was one cool dude!

politically, I'm a Jeffersonian Democrat.

Bush, that is!

...

oy, I suddenly feel sick to my stomach. :puke:

The real brains behind the Constitution.

Authored the Ninth Amendment.

He was the one.

In class we discussed it as the forgotten amendment.

I agree though, Madison was a true political prodigy.

I call you that with great affection, of course.

}(

An Aggie is one who goes to Texas A & M, if I'm not mistaken. :D

OSU used to be Oklahoma A&M. OU fans regularly refer to OSU fans as Aggies.

aggie perfectly ok.

Thanks for the correction!

...extremely important and mostly overlooked. Unless * succeeds in packing the court with extremists I expect to see the jurisprudence of the 9th greatly increased. I think it is a better foundation for Roe than privacy.

In any case, apart from being principal architect of the Constitution, Madison also reluctantly cobbled together the Bill of Rights and saw to its passage. His introduction of the Bill of Rights to the House is the single best treatise on it and the antidote to any number of dumbass freeper misconceptions about the Constitution.

My number one trap for those rubes:, "So tell me, just where do we get our rights, anyway?"

---

9th Amendment. Arriba!

The good doctor appreciated ladies beyond the bloom of youth. Wise indeed.

Cheers :toast:

Paul Revere was the emblem of 1776-1976

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

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What is it men cannot be made to believe!

-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

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Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

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Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

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I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")

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I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

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They believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.

-Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800

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Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802

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History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

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The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814

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Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

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In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814

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If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814

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You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819

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As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, Oct. 31, 1819

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Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Short, April 13, 1820

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To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820

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Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.
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I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

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And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823

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It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it , and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825

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All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)

jumped into my mind, first thing, I didn't know why, you helped me remember.

James Madison's political views their fore he probably had as much or more impact on the Constitution than any of the founding Fathers even if he was not involved with it's writing. His Virginia Bill for Religious freedom was basically the blue print for the first Amendment.

If Jefferson had not introduced the Kentucky Resolutions. Madison basically was Jefferson's hatchet man in the House, the press, and as Secretary of State. Might be an oxymoron to use the word for a 5'2", 90 pound weakling, but you could call him Jefferson's "enforcer".

although I absolutely admire Ben Fanklin.

Working more or less behind the scenes, talking to people and spreading the word on his own and through Committees of Correspondence.... kind of like a colonial version of a message board :)

:D

:D

:bounce:

:beer:

His memoirs from his stay in French prison, left to rot by Washington, are fascinating.

That man was a true patriot and progressive thinker. Wonderfully wise.

Franklin for being the progenitor of that peculiar penchant Americans have for participation in civic activities, Madison for his work on the writing of the Constitution.

It is a profound shame that young Americans are not required to read the Federalist Papers or have a working knowledge of the Constitution.

But I haven't read the Federalist Papers. Me, the history major geek hasn't read the Federalist Papers. Shun me. :cry:

and you really should read the federalist paper. they explain why we have the form of government we have.

You're probably one of those blasted Yankee fans. Or worse, a White Sux or St. Louis "We-Got-Rolled-Over-By-A-Team-That-Hadn't-Won-A-World Series-in-86-Years" Cardinal fan. :P

However, I'll get on the Federalist Papers post-haste. :D

and #78 by Hamilton is superb.

to whit:

When dealing with pseudo-intellectuals like Scalia who bray on about "original intent" of the Constitution and the Constitutional Convention and proclaim that the Supreme Court does not interpret the Constitution. Try a dose of Alexander Hamilton, in the Federalist Paper No. 78 stating clearly the "original intent" of the Courts and its necessary actions, and it runs counter to Scalia's thrust. If Scalia use the hoary rubric of "original intent" of the Constitution, then so too he should tack to those ideas that laid its philosophical ground work.

From Federalist Paper Number 78.

"The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body."

"Ascertain its meaning" means to interpret. There is no other interpretation. Scalia is a gross intellectual fraud or a blatant hypocrite in this matter. And lawyers and journalists out there need to call him on this, reach under his robe and stick this quote right up that little lying bastard's asshole.

So I wonder how Madison would have turned out had he not learned from TJ.

Why the antipathy?

He may not be my very favorite, but I think he's way overlooked. It's pretty close between him, Jefferson, and Paine. :)

You ARE aware, aren't you, that Henry was a theocrat who wanted to establish an organised church in Virginia? Jefferson wrote to Adams commenting on this fact, and said re Henry: "While Mr. Henry Lives another bad constitution would be formed, and saddled for ever on us. What we have to do I think is devoutly to pray for his death..."

who just happens to be my ancestor. Guess that's where I got my rabble-rousing genes!

because he was a genius and yet he had no votes. I wonder if hadn't been killed if he would've been president?

...my guy shot your guy...:P

or saved it from getting a king

Hamilton didn't have very much faith in democracy, sad to say.

Hamilton, for all his contributions to the founding of our nation, was a militarist of the worst order. Long before the South ever considered secession, Hamilton was making plans for an American empire, if not under our flag, then his own. He tried ceaselessly to get us into a declared war with France, when John Adams wouldn't have it because he knew what a disaster it would be. Hamilton, again, for all his acheivements, would have been a lousy President.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy"

and when you've had too many beers...

"It is widely understood, that in the course of human digestion, a great quanity of wind is produced in the bowels"

I raise my glass to Benjamin Franklin. :beer:

A friend of mine at Western Illinois has that quote taped up in his dorm room. Couldn't agree more. :D

I went with Thomas Jefferson on the strength of his Renaissance range and grasp of his times, as well as his sturdy rejection of the fundamentalist nutcases hounding him.

And also because he was a pro-science, red-haired fiddle player.

Thanks for a great poll & thread.

I wanted to vote for Jefferson, but I ended up voting for John Adams, mainly because a) I have a new appreciation for him after reading David McCullough's wonderful book and 2) Adams just doesn't get enough love from people. They always think of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, et al, don't think much about Adams' contributions.

I'm going to have to get to McCullough's book.

Thanks again for getting us nite-owls to focus on some really good stuff.

...part of the Virginia Junto of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. They were very intent on protecting the landed aristocracy in this country, and did everything they could to protect their interest. In order to protect their interests, they were also very intent on dominating the early Republic, and thus, much of our history has been written due to their influence.

I named Madison, adore Jefferson, but I dunno, I might have to list Tom Paine second. He was easily the most eloquent of the bunch (and for all my adoration of Jefferson Paine might have drafted the Declaration.)

Some favorite quotes from my collection:

"An army of principles can penetrate where an army of
soldiers cannot." -Thomas Paine

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no
more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as ameans of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter." -Thomas Paine

"As to the book called the bible, it is blasphemy to call it the Word of God. It is a book of lies and contradictions and a history of bad times and bad men. -Thomas Paine

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to tax) but
"to bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth." -Thomas Paine

"It may not always happen that our soldiers are citizens, and the multitude a body of reasonable men; virtue, as I have already remarked, is not hereditary, neither is it perpetual." -Thomas Paine

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." -Thomas Paine

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." -Thomas Paine

"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man." -Thomas Paine

"But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing." -Thomas Paine

"I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy." -Thomas Paine

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church." Thomas Paine

"If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace." -Thomas Paine

"It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same." -Thomas Paine

"Lead, follow, or get out of the way." -Thomas Paine

"My country is the world, and my religion is to do good." -Thomas Paine

"Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it." -Thomas Paine

"The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason." -Thomas Paine

"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum." -Thomas Paine

"The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." -Thomas Paine

"Time makes more converts than reason." -Thomas Paine

"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes." -Thomas Paine

"We have it in our power to begin the world over again." -Thomas Paine

"When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon." -Thomas Paine

"When shall it be said in any country of the world, my poor are happy, neither ignorance or distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes not oppressive; the rational world is my friend because I am friend of its happiness. When these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and government ." -Thomas Paine

It's refreshing to revisit Thomas Paine in light of present times.

Much appreciated.

he partied hard!

Everybody always leaves out poor Thomas Paine. He was just as much a FF as the others.

...to fornicate. He bedded many women married to government officials, so they sent him to France as an ambassador...then he bedded so many French politicians' wives that he very nearly caused a war! So they had to bring him back home again and smooth things over. This is all true shit that has been left out of the sanitized version of his history. The man was a trip!

I also like Tom Jefferson, for other reasons.

Go Ben! :evilgrin:

...that the key to a long life was to bed a different woman every night! THAT'S MY KIND OF FOUNDING FATHER!

I went with Jefferson, because I love his rational thoughts on freedom of - and from - religion. "Question with boldness even the existence of God" is one of my favorites.

we would have the nation we do without John Adams. So I voted for Adams.

Yes! I don't think he gets nearly the credit he deserves. Not many people know that he wrote the longest functioning written constitution in the world, the Massachusetts constitution. Without Adams, we might never have gotten crucial financial support from the Dutch at a time when we desperately needed it during the Revolution. One of the brightest of our Founding Fathers, too.

He was very intrumental in writing the Constitution.