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JSullz59 71 points ago +71 / -0

It's a republic if we can keep it. They gave us the tools. It's up to us to use those tools.

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CameraWheels 33 points ago +33 / -0

2A

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deleted 26 points ago +26 / -0
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deleted 9 points ago +9 / -0
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deleted 37 points ago +37 / -0
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DashCarlile 35 points ago +36 / -1

They called commies “levelers” back in the day. Since their goal was to artificially “level the playing field.

May be a good avenue of research.

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deleted 18 points ago +19 / -1
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Litecola2 4 points ago +4 / -0

REMEMBER, whatever they called them, that the founders had Classical educations (look up homeschooling curriculum of this type for a quick rundown, and you can buy the books for yourselves!). Essentially, great civilizations and great thinkers. And even Ancient Greece had relativists and abolish-private-property people shouting in the square.

Imagine they already had STUDIED how heathens and atheists thought, how tyrants ruled and despots plundered under the guise of authority. Heck, Robin Hood was an old story then! Don't be time snobs- we're not more intelligent today than people in ancient Greece or our founding fathers, geniuses and patriots were and are the architects of greatness.

Their Great Experiment is us, the USA- the first country to plan for peaceful transitions of power among unrelated people according to a representative expression of the people's will. We won't need to amend more, we will need to go back to the original! Only those citizens with a stake in the game (payers!) should have votes. Though I would add a civics quiz, because if you don't have even a basic understanding of your govt and who your leaders are, you really should not be voting.

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MAGA_APN 2 points ago +3 / -1

wow, gave me goosebumps to read that and think about that

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merelymeek 5 points ago +5 / -0

No, this is not correct.

Levellers didn't call themselves levellers initially, that was a pejorative term assigned to them by their political opponents which they eventually adopted because more people knew them by that name than their original name "Agitators."

Levellers were populists who opposed common ownership of property and originally called for freedom of religion and equality for all under the law. Later they called for excluding anyone that didn't own land from the electorate.

The communistic faction during that time period were called the "Diggers" who advocated the abolition of private ownership of land.

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DashCarlile 2 points ago +2 / -0

This is an interesting take on it. Diggers called themselves the "True Levellers."

Thanks for the clarifications.

http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/diggers

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DashCarlile 1 point ago +1 / -0

Diggers! Ok. Guess I got confused.

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borscht-nazi 2 points ago +2 / -0

You don't seem to know your history: https://www.britannica.com/event/Leveler-English-history

They put forward a program of economic reform in the interests of small property holders—complete equality before the law, the abolition of trading monopolies, the reopening of enclosed land, security of land tenure for copyholders, no conscription (impressment) or billeting, drastic law reform, the abolition of tithes (and so of a state church), and complete freedom of religious worship and organization.

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DashCarlile 2 points ago +2 / -0

Yeah. You might be right. The socialists claim them though so I think that's where I got it confused. The movement was definitely the seeds of both modern day egalitarianism and socialism. Two different extremes.

I guess my misunderstanding was I thought the founding fathers criticized them instead of embraced them. I'm not sure that they really directly wrote about them.

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borscht-nazi 2 points ago +2 / -0

There were "Diggers" also, maybe that's who you were thinking about.

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DashCarlile 2 points ago +2 / -0

This is an interesting take on it. Diggers called themselves the "True Levellers."

Somebody else mentioned the diggers. Found this and figured I might as well pass it on.

http://bcw-project.org/church-and-state/sects-and-factions/diggers

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borscht-nazi 2 points ago +2 / -0

Yes. Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

The history of these ideas development is a pretty fascinating subject if you look at it from the perspective of humanity's collective consciousness.

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DashCarlile 2 points ago +2 / -0

Strange and interesting that the BEST and the WORST political ideologies ever possibly stem from the same short-lived movement in England nearly 400 years ago.

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borscht-nazi 2 points ago +2 / -0

I think the ideology itself isn't new, even pre-Christian Russia had a form of a representative government, for instance, and we are talking like 9th century and shit.

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DashCarlile 2 points ago +2 / -0

I’m thinking the offshoots of egalitarianism and socialism.

Most democracies still would have had a caste system of some sort.

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RagnarDannes 10 points ago +10 / -0

Honestly, big business and tech is something they missed too.

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tdwinner2020 9 points ago +9 / -0

Adam Smith discussed big business and its evils in the Wealth of Nations, but that was... just about 1776. I imagine the Founders would have had a chance to read it by 1787, but they did not have enough experience to figure out what to do about that.

Tech is something they really could not have foreseen, but the framework they came up with is almost perfect. What's missing is that freedom of speech should apply not just to public fora but to private fora when they are meant to be fora and open to the public at all.

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Gadsden 4 points ago +4 / -0

Not really. The public square applies to big tech, and big business fall under monopoly laws. We just don't enforce most of our laws, these days.

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NotDeaDes 3 points ago +3 / -0

prior to section 230 they did. 2 cases set precedence. the only time a company got sued and won was because they moderated before section 230 was enabled.

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tdwinner2020 6 points ago +6 / -0

Had they waited a few years longer before writing the Constitution they would have known all about the French Revolution, Jacobins, Robespierre, Danton, the Terror, and all their nonsense. But they might have passed up the chance to have the beautiful Constitution they have us in 1787 and its Bill of Rights that they gave us in 1789. By 1795 it might have proven impossible to come to the compromises that were possible in 1787. That we got these beautiful documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, is arguably a real miracle of God, because though they were written by men, they might have been divinely inspired, and though they were written by men, the circumstances that made them possible were just so and the right men were around at the right times who had no great tyrannical ambitions.

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Litecola2 1 point ago +2 / -1

They knew more than the average man today, with all our resources and free information available with ease.

They studied ancient civilizations to a depth we don't see outside of some home schools and great colleges. They knew more about tyrants and royalty, philosophers and foundational thinking than collegiate a and professors today! Moral relativism (sophistry) is NOT new, sadly not are sexual deviants (dionysians, and imagine them with power over slaves, even children), heathens and atheists and their arguments against God or all religion in favor of an all-powerful state are also not new.

We on the most part have been very successful and very sheltered from the worst evils, whose followers took advantage of our ignorance and lack of vigilance and grew their underground empire beneath our complacent feet. Now we must be ready to clean house, paying our prosperity and peace back, and then strengthen our foundation and our children to pay it forward as well.

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tdwinner2020 2 points ago +2 / -0

What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude -Thomas Paine

But even Athens succumbed. Nothing is forever. But we should fight to restore the U.S.A., that it should have another 230+ years.

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Flyingwalrus69 25 points ago +25 / -0

Made sure we had guns too ^^

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Crusty_Pede 3 points ago +3 / -0

But they did make that section confusing as hell, enough for people to question it. If I had a time machine... nukes would be able to be owned by private citizens.

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Litecola2 2 points ago +2 / -0

TBH their own writings and common understanding at the time was clear. Our own ignorance of their writings is from a purposeful hiding of them in school and our own lack of initiative in fighting the humanist-communist public school system to gain real knowledge for ourselves and impart it to our children.

If you're not closely managing your kids' educations at this point (home school!!), you're losing a battle for their souls and our futures.

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deleted 18 points ago +18 / -0
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TheMAGAnificent 10 points ago +10 / -0

Okay, I'm an idiot who grew up in bad schools...

We really are the first nation to ever implement voting? And not only that, but the created the electoral college system to prevent mega cities from overruling the fly over states?

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PublicDiscourse 6 points ago +6 / -0

It was a necessary to compromise to get the various states to ratify the constitution. No state would have signed on if it was an Athenian democracy where New York (the most populous state at the time) dictated terms to the rest.

It’s really amazing how pragmatic and knowledgeable the founders were to learn from the mistakes of history and structure those learnings in a constitution designed to maximize personal freedom.

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deleted 5 points ago +5 / -0
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TheJimmReaper 3 points ago +4 / -1

What???? Voting has been a part of human culture for thousands of years, the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians voted via a pottery shard and back then they had 1 person, 1 vote, 1 shard so there was less chance some idiot could start tabulating percentages of votes to find a winner!!!

Not being funny buddy but it seems like dumb fuckers from 3,000 years ago had a smoother, better run, less corrupt system that the current set up in 2020 where our President gets 8m more votes than last time yet still loses to a guy who has more birthday candles than followers

Yes we will blame your bad schooling but history is great and teaches us about both our wins and failures, i hope you will go and actually look into the history of voting now and not just take this as some sort of insult

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Frontlineinfantmeme 2 points ago +2 / -0

Birthday candles 🎂 top kek!

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Tryhardneckbeard [S] 3 points ago +4 / -1

At the time of our founding, all other countries where monarchies or some other form of totalitarianism. Only the Colonies were practicing democracy.

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orthodoxvirginian 3 points ago +3 / -0

Not true, although we made some major improvements.

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Litecola2 2 points ago +2 / -0

Friend, look online I to classical home school curriculums (curricula) and consider buying some of their books for yourself! Philosophy and the fall of great empires were key in good education at the time- which was majorlybdone at home until college. Many old books that the founders studied are even free on project gutenberg. The Law (Bastiat), Democracy in America (de Tocqueville) or any of the founders' original writings could be a great start also.

Fill your time and your brain with good and beautiful things, it is never too late.

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NuclearRocks1 8 points ago +8 / -0

How kool is that ............

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lispboy 8 points ago +8 / -0

The U.S. Constitution was conceived by divine inspiration.

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ChilledCovfefe 6 points ago +6 / -0

If you believe in God or not, you have to wonder what a huge coincidence it was that all these smart and great men existed at exactly the same time within a couple hundred miles of each other.

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Tryhardneckbeard [S] 5 points ago +5 / -0

There are no coincidence, only providence. This is the origins of the USPS. They knew communication and logistics were key to their survival thus even prior to the founding of the colonies they were taxing themselves to provide this service.

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ChickNorris 5 points ago +5 / -0

Now sit back and think about the shared wisdom and foresight those men had. Also, their concern for future generations and not just conquering for the sake of conquering.

A Reminder

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deleted 4 points ago +4 / -0
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tdwinner2020 3 points ago +3 / -0

They came up with a great and robust system. There's no guarantee it will survive one more year, or three more months even. But they gave us a fighting chance.

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Crusty_Pede 4 points ago +4 / -0

We were warned we were always one generation away from losing freedom.

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Huskereyez 3 points ago +3 / -0

I’m sorry, not sorry, I just blew my American load all over your living room.

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TheJimmReaper 2 points ago +2 / -0

Fuckin Riggers... am i right

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MAGA_APN 1 point ago +1 / -0

Why does the press have special protection. they are complicit. Or worse

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borscht-nazi 1 point ago +1 / -0

Not enough caps.

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Wood_Shampoo1 1 point ago +1 / -0

Incredible how smart the founding fathers were!

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Fenix 1 point ago +1 / -0

Time travelers. Literally this.

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Sherlocks_Pocket 1 point ago +1 / -0

We have the best founders don’t we folks?!