[Broken_Hippo]

I can't even imagine how the Founders would react to things like the PATRIOT Act.

I can't even take this seriously. These are the same folks that kept people as property. Didn't make sure everyone could vote (male land owners only). They founded the country on land stolen from folks already living here. It isn't like the founders were really beacons of freedom, at least not if you use today's standards and honestly, they'd not even have a grasp of the events leading up to it. Perhaps they'd back it up considering how glaringly the world has changed since then.

I'm sure it is supposed to make folks think the country is straying from its foundations, but look around: People that aren't straight, white land owners are walking around with all these rights and freedom and stuff. That's already happened long ago. Maybe straying is a really good thing.

[bliteben]

Imagine being born into several flawed systems, risking everything, and many had a lot to risk to fix one aspect of a system and being judged because you didn't fix everything. You act like the founding fathers created slavery on their own. The freedom given to the world by the US and by extension Napoleon was not some inevitable thing and its not something that will necessarily persist either as we can easily judge from mankind's very limited written history.

[Breza]

Well said. Judging historical figures by modern standards isn't fair. We should look at each person as a flawed human being and take away lessons from what they did right and what they did wrong.

[Broken_Hippo]

It is fair when folks are speculating what the people from the past would say about modern problems - which is what this started out as. If one is wrong but not the other, some folks aren't arguing in good faith.