Founder’s Syndrome

December 9, 2009

Is that what the founders would have wanted?

Or, no, wait, I have a better question. Who gives a shit?

Well, a lot of people. Because to even the most self-proclaimed logical, reasonable people, often “it’s what the founders intended” is a perfectly sound argument. I mean, it’s really not different from saying “it says so in the Bible” or “it’s a tradition”, which just about anyone with half a brain would tell you is fallacious, but somehow whether something was the desire of some revered founder is a perfectly valid question.

It is of course seen most often when discussing our country’s Founding Fathers. Is a particular law unjust? Of course it is. Why? ZOMG, Thomas Jefferson said so!

At risk of having over 9,000 libertarian idiots jumping down my throat… so what? Is Thomas Jefferson here right now? Does he know what is going on in order to soundly judge what is best in a particular situation? Uh, no, I think he’s been dead for almost 200 years. How do we know how he would have felt about a certain law of today? I mean, we can get an idea based on what we know about how he felt about things in his day, sure. But even so, even if he were here to judge a given situation, does that mean whatever he would decide is right? Does that mean whatever he says is gospel for no other reason than who the speaker is?

Sounds a little silly now, doesn’t it?

“How dare you?! The Founding Fathers were geniuses! You must hate liberty! Go live in communist China, bitch!”

Oy. Did I say anything against liberty? Uh, no. I love freedom. I love the United States. However, I believe the principles our nation is based on are good and right on their own, regardless of who may have said so. So if there is some law being proposed that is anti-freedom, tell me it is anti-freedom and how specifically that is bad, which you should have no trouble proving tangibly. Don’t quote 200-year-old dead guys at me. It’s insulting to these ideals of liberty to act like the only reason they’re good is because some special person said so.

We see this in religion as well. What would Moses or Jesus or whoever think of today’s moral issues? How would they feel about homosexuality or abortion or capital punishment or whatever else? Certainly, people like to debate this until they bleed out their asses. Of course, they tend to forget one important thing: It doesn’t fucking matter! While, okay, religious people might worry because their opinions are holy doctrine and thus must be obeyed, but if you can’t know for sure, then you can’t base much on it.

Or, hell, the issues don’t even need to be controversial. Do we really need Jesus or Muhammad or Buddha or whoever else to have told us that being good, kind, and loving is the right way to be? Hasn’t this pretty much all through history proven to be the right way to be anyway, regardless of what deity or prophet said so? Hell, just about every single religion has these guidelines, even ones that never knew about each other. Atheists know that being good, kind, and loving is the right way to be. So maybe, just maybe, these things are good on their own merit and it doesn’t matter who said it.

We also see this in organizations, including NYRA. The idea is that an organization should never deviate from what its founders wanted of it. Often this is in the form of the founder, still with said organization, refusing to alter the plans and strategies regardless of good reason to. In other cases, even if the founders are no longer with the organization for whatever reason, there’s some feeling of obligation to keep the organization in line with what the founder originally intended. Of course, this can be detrimental.

In NYRA’s case, we’ve been around for 11 years, and at the start the org’s founders had some basic intentions and ideas, to be moderate and pragmatic and avoid being too controversial, and a bunch of other stuff. A lot of what they decided in 1998 that NYRA should be was effectively set in stone, and even now in 2009 we’re expected to stick by it. Hasn’t usually been a problem. But every once in a while, Alex or someone else will raise concern that some proposed change “isn’t what the founders wanted”. Well, in NYRA’s case, that’s an incredibly dumb concern. For one, the founders aren’t still with us. Why should we care what they think now when they have since gone off to do other things and may or may not even care about the cause anymore? Also, it assumes they were 100% correct in everything that they decided, which is stupid seeing as they are human just like the rest of us and are prone to mistakes, omissions, and biases. Not to mention that I’m fairly sure all of the founders were white guys, so youth rights issues that may affect mostly girls or minorities would probably not get factored in or not considered important enough, which may or may not be a contributing factor to NYRA members being overwhelmingly white and male. And even if they were perfectly fair and wise and deciding what NYRA should be, it’s still been 11 years. Youth rights in 1998 wasn’t the same as it is in 2009. Different battles have been fought. Young people’s lives are at least slightly different. Hell, I was 16 only a decade ago, yet in talking with NYRAnians who are 16 now, I find myself amazed at how much has changed already! So it’s silly to be required to keep going by the 1998 playbook when it’s just growing more and more obsolete.

Changes over time are expected and normal, because the world changes constantly. To not change with it and dig your heels into the ground, refusing to utter a word against what the founders decided a long time ago, only causes you to be out of touch. Stick to your morals and basic ideas, yes, but if your only defense of them is what some predecessor decided that is for some reason infallible law, then maybe they aren’t worth sticking to. Don’t give me important sounding names. Give me a real compelling relevant reason.

2 thoughts on “Founder’s Syndrome”

  1. The worrying fusion between church and state may have led some people to confuse Jesus and the founding fathers 😀 Which one was infalible again? 😉

  2. When I saw the title, I thought you were going to talk about how isolated communities have similar genetic abnormalities based on the genetics of their founders. I’m a nerd.

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