- Historic Sites What Would The Founders Do Today? Suppose they
could go on "Meet The Press"... June/July 2006 | Volume 57,
Issue 3 The Founders invite our questions now because they
invited discussion when they lived. They were argumentative,
expansive know-it-alls, hanging their ideas out to dry in public
speeches and in journalism. Not everything they did was for
public consumption or discussion. They schemed behind closed
doors, as all politicians do, and they issued sweeping
pronouncements from on high, as proud and intelligent people
often do. “I have written very dogmatically,” said Fisher Ames
at the end of one letter, describing the doings of the First
Congress, “and why should I affect doubts, when I entertain
none?” Yet since the Founders also knew that the judges of their
plans and their doings were the public, they constantly sought
to show, demonstrate, persuade, or inspire. The Declaration
submits itself to “the opinions of mankind.” The Federalist
papers declare that their arguments “will be o