Perhaps the Founders Would Be Disappointed. So What?

Gallup apparently has a habit of asking, on one of its late-July polls, whether the respondents believe that "the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be pleased or disappointed by the way the United States turned out." They asked this for the Fourth of July in 1999, when 55% to 44% the public believed the Founding Fathers would be disappointed. Then there was a little surge of, I dunno, patriotism? Something, anyway, because when they asked it during the summer of 2001 (note that this is prior to September of 2001, so this wasn't a rally-'round-the-flag thing) the numbers had flipped: 54% to 42%. The bounce receded a bit by 2003, with a 50%/48% split in favor of "pleased."

Well, all that's changed now: just 27% think they'd be pleased, while 71% think they'd be disappointed.

I have two comments to make about these numbers, one short and one long. First, the short one: while I understand it on a psychological level, on any rational level it is insane for the numbers to have changed that much over the last decade. Right now we're in an economic slump, sure. That has astoundingly little to do with how the country has turned out when we're talking about 250 years! I suppose some of the stuff about intractable war has become more obvious in that time, and I guess if you're a right-winger you've probably gone all Clarence Thomas on the entire Obama Presidency. But, c'mon, in both of those dimensions honestly, from where we were in 1776 we were at least 90% or 95% of the way, ten years ago, to where we are now. The country just isn't that different from its 2001 version, compared to the mutual differences to the early Republic. If you think the tipping-point was in that particular decade, well, I'd be curious to hear you defend it.

Now the long one: I'm in the 71%. I think the vast majority of the Founders would be kind of livid if they were taken on a TARDIS trip from July 4th, 1776 to July 4th, 2013. Part of the reason why is that you have a lot of different changes, each with the potential to alienate a different Founding-era constituency. Any founder particularly wedded to the idea of America as a uniformly Protestant, or even just Christian, or even just religious nation would be disappointed. Any founder particularly uncomfortable with the idea of, you know, gay people--and let's be honest, that's essentially all of 'em!--would be disappointed. Thomas Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic? Crashed and burned. And then, of course, there's the whole contingent who were committed to the supremacy and superiority of the white race, and the larger contingent who were committed to the political supremacy of the male sex. They're both in for a shock. (Of course, some of their wives and slaves might like what they would see in 2013, but none of them signed the Declaration.)

There may be other, subtler issues that would cause some to be disappointed. Yes, many of them probably wouldn't like how powerful the federal government has become, or that we have standing armies now, or that the practice of corporal punishment of children has gone mostly out of fashion. Or whatever. And psychologically, my guess is that finding one big change that a given Founder thought was a big negative would be enough to put that guy squarely in the Disappointed camp. Some might be judicious enough to say, okay, that's not how I envisioned it, but it looks like a nice place altogether, prosperous and free overall, and maybe my vision of the future didn't do so bad, not compared to all the hardline pro-slavery guys anyway. And honestly I think Alexander Hamilton would just plain love it. But most of them, I think, would find something to hate in how the future panned out, so I think it definitely true that most of them would consider themselves Disappointed.

But, guess what? They'd be wrong! All of those changes that they would be disappointed in? They were great! Racial and gender equality is awesome! Sexual liberation is awesome! Cities are awesome! Religion is not awesome! (Okay, I guess if you're particularly religious you might not be with me on that point...) And, you know what? All you conservatives who love to talk about how the Obama Administration is betraying the Founders' ideal of limited government? If Paul Ryan's budget were passed into law tomorrow, it would be a rounding error on the tally of how far the federal government's powers have been enlarged since 1789. You wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Among other things, as the Founders probably knew much better than modern "constitutional conservatives," big spending maketh not big government, and spending cuts don't fight tyranny. If you repealed the Social Security Act of 1935 and all subsequent amendments and additions thereto, you'd change the dynamic of federal power, but last I checked the Republican Party is firmly against that course of action, which means that all those conservatives are positively thrilled that we've expanded the federal government way beyond what the Founders envisioned. They just think, of course, that we went too far a couple years back. (Though of course, they're the ones happiest about something the Founders really thought was a sign of tyrannical government, namely our marvelous modern standing army.)

Really, there's only one way in which America, 2013 is substantially worse than America, 1776: our environment has spent the intervening 237 years being degraded with a vengeance, and in ways whose full devastating impact will not be fully known for another century. Other than that, all the myriad massive changes which have swept through this nation and the entire world which the people of 1776 could not have envisioned and probably would not have liked the thought of had they known they were coming have been for the better. We are a nation larger, more populous, more prosperous, more powerful, more cohesive, more egalitarian, more democratic, and, I think, freer than any reasonable extrapolation from 1776 could have foreseen. And if the Founders don't like it, they're free to spin around in their graves all they like.

(Except Alexander Hamilton, though. Seriously, that dude was awesome, and way ahead of his time. He'd feel right at home now.)