If feminist thinkers could sit down with the founding fathers
In the week following Donald Trump’s Presidential victory, the country has seen outrage, and is left wondering how our great country and it’s overarching infrastructure could allow something like this to happen.
How is it possible that this happened? How is it possible that Hillary got the most people to vote for her, but Trump ultimately took the win? Why does the electoral college work that way, and is it really fair? Why can’t we just keep Obama in the White House for another term?
The answers to these questions: because the founding fathers said so.
The founding fathers are long gone, but the Constitution that they created so long ago is still used as the ultimate rule book on how to run this country.
Let’s face it though, that old ass document is outdated, and we could stand to change it up a little..or a lot.
Who were the founding fathers in the first place other than just a bunch of people who took it upon themselves to give their hand a try at running a brand new country. Their document, the Constitution is held up as the thing that has all the answers. That document ultimately rules all of the United States, and is essentially the reason the electoral college works the way it does and the reason we can’t keep our favorite President Obama in office an extra four years.
The system we hold in place today as feminist Marguerite Waller would say, “privileges the assertion of expertise over the facilitation of exchange.” We take the founding fathers as the experts, the be all end all. We take the Constitution as a product of their expertise and defend it as the final word. We took that document, framed it, put it up for everyone to see, and solidified all that it holds as ultimate truth, as if it could have the answers to anything and everything Lady America could ask.
That being said, the founding fathers were not time-telling super heroes that had all the answers the country would ever need. They had no real way of knowing what problems would arise in the future. Their document has no real way of keeping up with the change that has come since it was written. The solidification of its contents has prevented us from having any real form of meaningful exchange with it. We are not able to question it or have any form of dialogue with the Constitution.
If we can’t have an exchange, there is no way to bring it up to modern times, no way to keep it moving and keep it current. The men that wrote the Constitution, were after all just men, humans with flaws like you and I. We cannot forget that they didn’t know what was to come. They probably didn’t even know their work would be commemorated so long after they created it. The founding fathers wrote to solve the issues at hand during their time. The Constitution was written in it’s time for its time only. It is no longer valid in the 21st century as it was in 1787.
Instead of holding the Constitution as the expert in rules of the country, we need to welcome the exchange of ideas. We need to be able to have a dialogue between the old and the present in order to create something more meaningful and more relevant to today.
The systems that worked then don’t necessarily work now. Where the Constitution is not valid, revolutionizing it is. This means discarding parts of the old and creating something new. This new thing will not have all the answers either, but it could be more of a working handbook for America. This new also needs to be open to change so that it can progress along with its time and people.
One stellar way to start is by kicking the rule that says each President can only serve two terms and keeping our friend Obama in the Oval Office a little longer.
