Today's Conservatives really are far more radical than they were just a couple of decades ago. Once upon a time a moderate Republican wasn't attacked and reviled and disowned as a "RINO". Cannibalism is a sure sign of extremism.

As for heeding the words of the Founders, I think we'd be wise to continue doing our best to understand how they saw the world and what their aims were in their revolution, so that we can continue the great fight. In his post below Tom seems to be pursuing a scorched-Earth policy: If the Republicans can't own the Founders lock, stock and barrel, then best if we just forget about 'em, and march forth into the neocon New World Order....rudderless and amnesiac about our past and our heritage.

Needless to say, I reject that attitude with everything I've got.

Over-reliance on quoting the Founders is a dead giveaway that somebody's trying to suborn the Founders to their own cause. Insofar as you can always find a quote to misquote if you cherry-pick enough, Tom's right about the Founders' writing amounting to a Rorscach test. What's striking is that it's Conservatives who wrap themselves in the flag and put on Founding Father masks and can misquote a Founder for any occasion; while Liberals, like me, read the Founders to try and understand how they thought and viewed the world, with the aim of translating their values into the modern world (and keeping them alive), and go much easier on the quotes. The quotes are often prescriptive and thus often irrelevant to the modern world or dangerously misleading. You have to read between the lines to see what they hoped to accomplish with each prescription.

I'm absolutely sure that their fundamental goal in establishing the United States was to break up concentrations of power and build a decentralized structure that would resist rebuilding tyrannical power centers. That's why I see the modern Republican devotion to protecting Big Business to be the ultimate in either hypocrisy or cluelessness about fundamental American values as held by the Founders. Concentrate enough economic power in a small enough hands, and economic and political power merge to form a new kind of tyranny. Just because it's not exactly like the tyranny the Founders fought is no excuse for for giving it a pass today.

On economics in general, Republicans love to claim that the Founders were all fanatic laissez-faire capitalists. Strange assertion, really, when you consider that Adam Smith published "The Wealth of Nations" in 1775 and that it's unlikely enough copies made it over to the colonies before war broke out to be a significant factor in the Founders' developing ideology. But they understood commerce from ground level, didn't need a textbook, and they sure as hell had witnessed the depradations of the Dutch East India and Hudson Bay companies. Wingers will never be able to misquote the Founders sufficiently to convince me that they'd fail to recognize WalMart and all its ilk as identical to the economic predators of their own age, writ much larger today.

Excellent essay. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Art.