I second what PhDork observes: you have not responded to any of your critics points here, just restated your convictions … in a fairly insulting way. It is not necessary to insult the intelligence and/or scholastic ability of every person who disagrees with you. Obviously, rigorous historians can have different interpretations of the evidence. Lepore’s contention is that the Tea Party activists are not simply interpreting the historical record in a way she disagrees with; she is arguing that parts of the historical record are being actively ignored. This is poor history, not just a difference of interpretation.
Obviously, you and I have a very different understanding of what it means to be socially responsible, seek social justice and care for future generations. As PhDork observes, your vision of social justice seems to ignore the poor and the vulnerable in favor of the economically secure and self-sufficient. This is not my vision for what our collective responsibility as citizens should be. On that point, it appears we will simply have to disagree.

ETA: You’ve merely restated your assertion that the Founders forbid universal health care, not provided any evidence to back it up. Repetition isn’t proof.

ROFLMAO. Seriously? You are equating the time lag between when one can vote and the policies that will affect them with the $13 trillion in debt that will HAVE to be paid back? The unfunded liabilities for the next fifty years, net present value $100 trillion? That we cannot look at Europe – failing, ailing, aging, in need of intervention – and see our own path? That with a national debt that is about equal to our GDP, that slight fluctuations in the health of our economy will not matter?

We’re not talking about taxing Americans at an extra few percent here. We are talking about massive economic changes if we are to pay this off.

What kills me is that young people, like you and Anna, support the policies that will end your financial health. You will spend your entire lives paying into Social Security and Medicare, but will not see any of it back. (“Taxing the rich” will not help; there are simply not enough rich to pay for it. You could tax the rich at 100%, assume that they will still produce, work, and invest, and not make this country economically sound.)

Sorry, baraqiel, there are social justice issues here. To equate the life-altering changes that we will have to make, and the life-altering debt that we are putting on our children’s shoulders, with slight variations in the law which affect children is the height of folly.

But rejoice – the Tea Party is doing its best, and fighting the good fight, to save you, Anna, Lepore, and every other liberal who thinks that feelings or clever arguments will change economic reality – to save you from yourselves.

Second, easier point first: the Framers explicitly prohibited Congress from addressing health care. Sorry, analysis STOPS THERE. The question is NOT (period, end of story, take your ball and go home) whether they would have wanted something, based on Anna and Lepore’s seance with Ben Franklin’s ghost; it is whether or not that is allowed by the document as written.

The Framers absolutely expected that things would develop which they did not foresee. Hence Article V: the Amendment process. If you want universal health care, then convene a Constitutional Convention amongst the states or get Congress to start the Amendment process. Argue before the people, the states, that we should radically redefine the role of government. But do not pass it by “deem and pass” and by paper-thin majorities in the House and Senate, then declare your opponents to be idiots who do not understand history.

Further, as someone who studied the history of medicine rather extensively, I’m here to tell you that you are 100%, unequivocally WRONG about your perceptions of medicine. Yes, modern medicine is better than 18th-century medicine (thank you, capitalism, for making that happen – and let’s all hope that the socialists don’t get their way, because I want to leave the next generation with better, more advanced medical care than we have). Nevertheless, baraqiel, the ancients and the colonists were not left without their medical remedies – some of which were very effective and are either in use today or are the basis of our modern remedies.

Doctors, as in professional physicians who studied the art and received payment for their services, have been around in many cultures since the ancient times. (Remember the Hippocratic Oath?) While anaesthesia was not introduced in the Western world until 1846 (IIRC), the Founders had antiseptics, painkillers (such as opium, which was very common in ancient Greece), rudimentary pharmaceuticals, and the like. To your modern eyes, it looks like nothing, but I don’t think that you can legitimately claim that it was so obscure that the Founders could not have conceived of having medical care. In fact, any study of the history of medicine indicates that you, Lepore, and Anna are horrifically wrong.

This is a pretty absurd false equivalence for at least two reasons: 1) If this objection were to be upheld, there could be no possible time difference between when a bill is passed in Congress, when the policy is implemented, and when taxes associated with the policy are implemented. After all, people are taxed when they start working, not when they turn 18, and new people turn 18 every day. You seem to be saying that even in the event that the taxes that may be needed to pay for some of Obama’s policies are implemented tomorrow, then it will *still* be taxation without representation because of all the new voters who turned 18 in between when Obama was elected (or when the health care vote happened) and tomorrow. This is obviously untenable. Taxation without representation was a concept that meant that things were happening to people *right then* that didn’t have representation *right then*. Future generations will in fact be represented in government in exactly the same way we are now. 2) On that note, you’re predicating your objection on something that may happen in the future. We have no idea what the US’s fiscal state is going to be even 5 years down the line, let alone 25 or 50. Other countries may have financial collapses, we may have another financial collapse, we may see unprecedented economic growth, who knows? Maybe the government will need to impose more taxes in the future but maybe there will be a ton of growth and it won’t be necessary. Alternately, maybe there will be another collapse and taxing more wouldn’t even help. We cannot know this right now. Cross that bridge when you come to it.

Moreover, I think you really glossed over this part of Anna’s post: “she is calling into question the Tea Partiers’ assumption that the values they are fighting for are values Revolutionary-era Americans would have understood” (emphasis added). Keep in mind the state of the medical system during the Revolutionary War era. Remember that more people died in the Civil War of disease than of tissue trauma — the germ theory of disease wasn’t even widely accepted until at least a century after the Revolutionary War. Now considering that, I personally don’t believe that people who lived in that era would even be able to conceptualize a hospital that wasn’t a horrific, nightmarish place where people were more likely to die than to leave healthy. The entire argument over universal health care is predicated on the very idea that we have a pervasive medical system that tends to help people more than it hurts them (physically, at least). If you don’t come from a society in which that’s true, why would you even consider the idea of government helping people to get health care?

In addition to what others have already said in response to your comment, I specifically wanted to address your charge that Lepore’s argument is an “anti-scholarly” one because she looks at the lived lives of the historical figures she writes about (in addition to their words), not merely the legal documents that some of them helped to craft.

First, I want to clarify that Lepore herself never claims to know what the “founding fathers” would have thought about our present-day concerns. Her only assertion concerning their political philosophy is that, based on her understanding of their political writings, they saw the social contract and the laws that govern our collective lives as in need of flexibility. Indeed, they themselves were acting in ways that were new, in some cases unprecedented. And utterly human. They were not omniscient gods who could predict every possible future contingency. Thus, Lepore argues that to take their words literally is a mis-handing of historical texts.

This is her opinion as an historian; not the only valid opinion but certainly not an anti-scholarly approach.

The second point I want to make regarding her juxtaposition of the lives of 18th-century Americans with those of present-day citizens is this: that the “founding fathers” whom most Americans learn about in school are hardly the only historical people who matter when we think about America’s past. And their experiences and opinions, however compelling, should not be the only ones that count when we make arguments based on what we believe our predecessors would or would not want. If we’re going to start claiming to know what Benjamin Franklin or Samuel Adams would have made of health care reform, we also need to consider what Franklin’s mentally ill brother or poverty-stricken sister would have made of it too. What poet Phillis Wheatley or enslaved persons would have wanted. Because all of those folks are part of our heritage.

Finally, as an historian I want to point out that while Lepore’s work (in this case) is a blend of memoir, opinion, and historical fact, she is a well-respected member of her chosen field and she takes care to contextualize and cite her historical sources. Her interpretation is, obviously, her own. But if you are going to charge her with needing to “brush up on her history,” I think you had better have a great deal of evidence to back up that assertion.

Also, I note that this is your first comment on this site. Please read our FAQs about commenting.

You may have noticed that some of the more gratuitiously assholish bits of your comment were redacted. Disagreeing is fine. Personal swipes at the person who wrote the post are not.

Keep it civil and we’ll do the same. If you can’t, your next comment will be deleted completely.

Roxeanne, you’re going to need to back up your assertions here with actual evidence.

And although I’m not ascribing this idea to you, an enormous proportion of this “what the Founders wanted” BS coming out of the Tea Party is based completely on “using the private lives of Founders to play psychic into their idea of policies.” See also : a Christian Nation, We are One.