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Dead Letter: On The Founding Father's Original Intent

Ironically enough, it turns out that the Founding Father's did NOT want the U.S. Constitution interpreted with the kind of "Original Intent" that Conservatives want.


According to the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, a sociologist:

"The most notes we have from the Philadelphia convention that eventually framed the Constitution, comes from Jame  Madison. But Madison did not want his notes published in his lifetime (he died in 1836) specifically because he did not want people to pivot off of what they thought the people in Philadelphia were doing." 


In other words, the "original intent" of James Madison - the only 'founding father' who's mind we know anything about at all, thanks to his notes - wanted the Constitution to be understood and applied subjectively, as it applied to the ideas and issues of the day. 

He wanted the Constitution to be interpreted, in other words, based on its text and the issues of the day; that the Constitution should be understood as a "living document" was the "original intent" of the founding fathers.

That was also the original intent of the stories that would later become "The Old Testament." 

And it was the interpretation of the "Old Testament" as a static document steeped in tradition, that necessitated a New one.

Because like a Constitution being interpreted through the backwards lens looking into the past, time has a way of turning "tradition" into a dead letter. 

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