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What? Nooooo way Dark Knight Send a noteboard - 30/08/2012 08:06:30 PM
The founding of America is simply my favorite time in history. I'm simply in awe of the men like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and, heck, even Thomas Paine. Their personal writings are mesmerizing. Nobody writes like that anymore. You could quote just about anything they wrote and apply it to an arguement about politics and blow people away. Their intellect is unmatched nowadays, sadly. Seriously, is there anybody out there right now writing such deep, meaningful things about life and liberty?

These people wrote a document that founded a country and is still, after 200+ years, almost unassailable. How incredibly amazing is that? And also sad, that we haven't managed to improve upon the foundation that was established so many years ago. This country is simply not what it was or how it was suppose to be. Still, for all the cracks in that foundation, it's still something special.

How I wish there was a founding father-type person running for election. What a world that would be.

People writing like that today would find their Wall of Text met by a Wall of TL;DR. Any sentence with more than two clauses is simply too complex for Short Attention Span Theater, as is any document with more than two paragraphs.


Sadly, you are 100% correct about that.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

That is ONE SENTENCE, not even an especially long one, by constitutional standards. Look at section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, almost a century later:


What a great sentence, no?

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

People no longer write like that because few can be bothered to read and comprehend it. Ending government by sound bite is as simple as demanding better instead of demanding simplicity. Heaven knows we should; the Constitutions text well demonstrates most government policy is too complex to fully address in five words.


Reading comprehension is a failing of modern teaching. And that damn Twitter!
Formerly Mat Bloody Cauthon on Wotmania, blessed be its name
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Anybody here ever studied the founding fathers of America? - 30/08/2012 07:34:28 PM 821 Views
Slave-owning, mysoginist, wig-wearing members of the landed elite? - 30/08/2012 07:51:33 PM 562 Views
Ha! Yeah, all personal faults aside - 30/08/2012 07:54:13 PM 501 Views
Not John Adams or Alexander Hamilton.....fool! *NM* - 31/08/2012 05:18:05 AM 297 Views
No, never, not even briefly. - 30/08/2012 07:57:39 PM 576 Views
What? Nooooo way - 30/08/2012 08:06:30 PM 578 Views
You're projecting. *NM* - 31/08/2012 12:48:12 AM 262 Views
I am aspiring. - 31/08/2012 01:09:40 AM 703 Views
As a personal aside ... - 31/08/2012 01:43:45 AM 633 Views
Yes. - 31/08/2012 01:49:41 AM 646 Views
Like I say, maybe I invest too much in online posting. - 31/08/2012 02:02:58 AM 676 Views
Re: - 31/08/2012 02:27:00 AM 657 Views
Re: Re: - 31/08/2012 02:37:35 AM 659 Views
Well - 31/08/2012 02:54:25 AM 663 Views
It does get repetitive too often. - 31/08/2012 05:07:41 AM 666 Views
Doesn't really matter. You're gonna keep doing it. - 31/08/2012 05:16:23 AM 618 Views
Maybe.... - 31/08/2012 05:03:11 PM 659 Views
Re: Maybe.... - 31/08/2012 05:15:52 PM 476 Views
Re: Maybe.... - 31/08/2012 06:18:32 PM 618 Views
You aren't Plato, Burke, or Madison. - 31/08/2012 10:34:22 AM 576 Views
That is why it is aspiration rather than equivalence. - 31/08/2012 05:01:20 PM 541 Views
I'm not so sure you're entirely right. - 30/08/2012 11:06:39 PM 702 Views
I did. They smelled of mahogany and death. They looked scabby and skeletal. - 31/08/2012 12:35:44 AM 602 Views
Sounds like you have a job to do. - 31/08/2012 01:11:10 AM 601 Views
Don't forget Hamilton! The creator of the American economy..... *NM* - 31/08/2012 05:19:50 AM 308 Views
... and big government. - 01/09/2012 01:54:20 PM 493 Views
I don't really buy that..... - 01/09/2012 08:33:28 PM 543 Views
I think the entire Age of Enlightenment is fascinating - 31/08/2012 06:32:23 PM 525 Views
You realize you just made a great argument for intelligentsia rule, right? - 01/09/2012 01:48:58 PM 612 Views
I would want better intelligenstia first - 01/09/2012 02:48:28 PM 684 Views
Ah, the old uneducated>miseducated argument. - 01/09/2012 03:39:07 PM 633 Views
*wonders if we could test* - 02/09/2012 02:45:10 PM 508 Views
no there is a better reason why it wouldn't work - 02/09/2012 02:58:18 PM 651 Views
No,no, I was wondering if -we- could test it. - 03/09/2012 04:17:11 PM 553 Views
yeah I am a bit of a cynic *NM* - 04/09/2012 03:01:28 PM 270 Views
I expect the rankings would be too subjective for credibility. - 02/09/2012 04:27:32 PM 637 Views

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