Quote Originally Posted by Threedee View Post
Apple, you're complete inability to move beyond materialism is what's wrong with your arguments. The American Founders were not leftists, and hence, absolutely nothing about their worldview was in any way driven by materialism. The Natural Rights that constitute American liberty are grounded in principle. Principles such as civic virtue, ordered liberty, belief in a higher power and purpose, and honor.

Stop looking at this matter through materialist prisms, such as class warfare and welfare bureaucracy. People experience liberty through independence and self-determination, also known as equality of opportunity. Not through equality of circumstance!

"The US Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself."
-Benjamin Franklin
The opportunity is not here today. Acquiring a piece of land requires more than a fast horse in a land rush. How many people can take a rifle and go hunt dinner?

When the ideas in the Constitution were put on paper the reality was different. People were a lot more equal in the sense everyone was required to do the same thing the same way. If one wanted a garden they had to dig the soil by hand which changed with the invention of the tractor and other farming instruments. The same applies to almost everything else.

The reality of 1776 is no longer. If one insists on sticking with the same principals we have to ensure other things are as equal as they were in 1776.

There is no "equal opportunity" today unless the government makes it so. For example, survival largely depends on education and acquiring an education is not an equal opportunity for everyone because not everyone can afford an education.

From products to services technology has replaced the idea the average person can earn a living simply by working. What we consider menial tasks today, tasks most anyone can perform, were "trades" and "professions" of yesteryear. Thus, everyone had the same opportunity. With a decent work ethic anyone could earn a living because earning a living did not require specialized knowledge. Most people were capable of doing some required job regardless of their education.

Considering opportunities and circumstances/reality have changed over the last 200+ years wouldn't the Founding Fathers still have wanted each and everyone to have similar opportunities and chances to pursue the benefits of liberty?

You're right. It wasn't about materialism in 1776 because it didn't matter then. The person with no education and no money had just as much a chance to acquire a piece of land and do a job as anyone else.

That has changed. Isn't it time we all adjusted to the reality?