do you think the founding fathers were liberal? an essay im working on please help

[Godless Gun Guy]

I consider myself to be quite liberal. Women should make their own choices. I don't care what the gays are doing. Worship your god however you want, but if he wants me to do something let him tell me himself. Your rights end where mine begin.
I think the founding fathers would.... er... eh. Hmmm.
Thought I could help, I was wrong. Good luck!

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), campaign speech at High Wycombe, England, November 27, 1832

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.
Hannah Arendt (1906 - 1975)

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them.
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Notebook, 1935

When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative.
Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 - 1968 )

A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881), Speech in the House of Commons, Mar. 3, 1845

[Frenchy]

The Liberal of that period would equate very much to today's Libertarian.

[sourpatch45]

well here is my paper it
its 3 pages double spaced



Do you think the founding fathers were liberal?

Throughout the years political parties have changed and switched roles, so it is difficult to say weather or not the founding fathers were liberal unless you define what liberal is. For the purpose of this essay I am going to refer to liberal as the way it is now as to my understanding. One of the things that is most important to me is the right to bear arms and that is something that I as most Americans believe is conservative belief, on the other hand gun-control is commonly associated with liberals. The second thing I can think of as a liberal belief is the right of a woman to choose to weather or not to keep or abort an unborn child, this idea probably wasn’t thought of but the spirit of this will be discussed. The third thing I am going to discuss is going to be the promotion of “affirmative action” and other equal opportunity subjects that are usually endorsed by liberals.

“….the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall NOT be infringed” I think this says a lot about their opinions on gun control. This line has been disputed many times of its meaning so how about a quote from Thomas Jefferson "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve to encourage rather than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” This quote is obvious that the second amendment was not meant for militias or to protect the right to hunt, but is meant as protection of “the people” from criminals. That quote only represents part of what I believe the second amendment was written for. The other part of the second amendment I believe is to protect the people of the United States from an oppressive and tyrannical government, and although there are already parts of the constitution that prevent this but when it comes down to it the constitution is just a piece of paper and I belive that it takes more then a piece of paper to protect the American people. James Madison also seems to believe this “Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace”-James Madison. His quote is saying that if we are a disarmed society then we do not have the ability protect ourselves from an oppressive government or other non-governmental tyrannical group. To sum up my argument on the views of our founding fathers in regards to the second amendment is a quote from the first president of the United States of America “A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government.” -George Washington. So in today’s standard of liberal vs conservative in my mind there is NO doubt that our founding fathers would be classified as “conservative” and are a very far from today’s standards of liberal.


Today one of the big issue that we commonly vote on and debate is the right of a woman to have an abortion. I don’t think that the founding fathers of this country could have anticipated the advances in medical science that have allowed this practice to take place in the United States. However there are things that were originally put in the constitution that although me to have an idea of how they would feel about a womans right to choose, I cannot even speculate on how they would feel about abortion itself. In the original constitution woman were not given the right to vote, nor were they afforded the same rights men have. So I can say without a doubt in my mind that they would not have given the right of woman to choose if she wanted an abortion or not. If the founding fathers were for the right to have an abortion, which like I said is impossible to find out, I feel that that right would have been put in the man’s hands and not the woman.

As America has progressed to a more equal society we have changed the constitution by adding amendments letting blacks and other minorities the right to vote and have given them the rights that all white men have. Throughout history these movements have usually been pushed by liberals. So since our founding fathers originally wrote the constitution to not give these groups the same rights as white males that leads me to believe that the founding fathers were not liberals in the modern sense.

So in conclusion I believe that if you relate the American people’s views as what a liberal is, the founding fathers were far from it. This answer is not that simple, in the days of the founding fathers lived the ideas the put forth of freedom and all the other rights they gave us were most likely a liberal view of the time. So since the term liberal has not had the same meaning throughout history one must choose which meaning they want to use and narrow that term down to a certain time frame in order to determine whether or not they would be considered liberal. In this paper I focused on our current meaning of liberal and the views that they as a group tend to represent in modern society and related them to the way life was back in the early days of this country. By doing this I feel there is no way the founding fathers were liberal, by the modern definition.

[sourpatch45]

that is the first draft before correcting grammar or other spelling mistakes. or wrong words but feel free to point them out encase i have missed them in my updated draft that isnt posted here.