That's good if the status quo is working for you. It's not so good if you're somebody who the system fails for.
The really horrifying part is that there are people in the latter group who imagine that they're part of the former. The system is failing them, but for a variety of reasons they're convinced that any change will make it worse.
Much of the time, it's because they've been played off against other groups who are also having problems in the current system, and told it's a zero-sum game: if they do better, you must be worse. If you just keep revering the "founding fathers" eventually you too will be successful.
The worse they do, the harder they revere. It's a vicious cycle, and I have no idea how to break it.
Are there better people, today, who could lead the country? Of course. Will they ever actually be elected to do so? Sadly, no.
America in the late 1700s was a weird moment in history where educated, forward-thinking intellectuals (not nobility, not just the moneyed elite — actually a lot of men who (mostly) deserved to be called intellectual) actually had a chance to make the rules. They made pretty good ones. Some flawed rules, but good ones.
We're not going to get that again. The real-time feedback of TwitterDemocracy would prevent us from ever getting a document as general yet meaningful as the Bill of Rights, with basically unfettered rights to speech and assembly.
So until I see a viable path to put people in charge who actually surpass them in wisdom and foresight, I'm going to stick to what they put forward. It has aged and worked amazingly well, and have 0 confidence that the politicians of today, if starting from scratch, would do better.
And FWIW, there are (by most measures) no other democracies out there which have gone as long under peaceful rule of law as the US. Every other democracy (save by some measures the UK) has fallen to coup or revolution in less than this duration.
Their latest constitutions may work to keep them stable as long as the US has managed. Or they may not. Time will tell.
The real outlier in the US is gun rights.
Are you taking the end of the US civil war as the starting point? If so, then Switzerland has a longer duration of peaceful rule of law.
Even if you do count from the end of the civil war, I would not consider my central thesis destroyed by the small and frankly uniquely weird country of Switzerland. Switzerland is a country that has done very well for its people, but the lessons which have kept it stable and safe over the past two centuries (have a lot of mountains, and don't be worth invading) are not ones which extrapolate out.
And let's be honest -- Switzerland was not functionally independent in WWII. It wasn't necessary to invade, because they did whatever the Third Reich wanted with their stolen gold and borders. This is not the stability I am looking for.
Would you say that Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political thought has been valuable and influential in the world?
What exactly is your central thesis? It sounds like you're presenting an argument of American exceptionalism, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding your point here.
It has aged well only if you ignore the fact that millions of Americans who were at first considered property, and then “freed” only to be incarcerated and discriminated against, don’t have a say in what “well” means.
Politicians of today understand today’s problems and are better equipped to find answers to those problems. They are armed with a team of educated aides and have access to political science research. I’m confident they could devise a better, modern constitution today.
I agree, though, that the Founders did create something remarkable: a genocidal empire that draped itself in ideals of equality and righteousness when it was largely built by slaves and exploited workers; professed to love diversity and Christian morals as it genocided untold numbers of Native Americans; styled itself as a defender against European imperialism in the Western Hemisphere while it built its own empire and repeatedly intervened militarily in Latin American countries; claimed to be in favor of free markets while using its military and police forces to suppress workers/foreign governments to favor American corporate interests; and so on. It really is a remarkable project.
Let's be honest. The Founders were wealthy landowners that wanted to create a political system that favored themselves, while deposing the British powers that were a rung above them.
The problem with appealing to the Founding Fathers is that they were profoundly uninterested in equality of opportunity, due to who they were. It is a useful exercise to consider what they would have done — that does not itself demonstrate anything.
1. The Founding Fathers were products of their place and time. Many other countries engaged in the slave trade and employed slave labor, and women played a similar role in other societies. Racism and sexism were commonplace around the world during their time. You can reasonably argue that American slavery was uniquely cruel and long-lived if you want, although I would say that position downplays the horrors suffered by slaves under other governments.
2. The Founding Fathers, for all their faults, were clearly very poignant observers of human nature and history. They thoughtfully designed an extremely successful form of government that has inspired countries around the world to copy their model and arguably contributed to material prosperity unparalleled in history.
None of that is to discount what you're saying, but it's only one piece of the puzzle.
Slavery eventually eliminated (before most other nations), at tremendous cost not appreciated by many benefiting from that payment.
Colonial slavery oppressed conquered people's on their local soil where they were the majority. This is hard to keep up for a global power constantly at war with its neighbors.
American slavery oppressed ethnic minorities ripped from their homeland and taken to a different continent. Slaves had a harder time coordinating rebellions as they were not a single conquered peoples, and were in the minority so couldn't count on winning battles of attrition.
American slavery, like the Roman version it was patterned against, could have continued for hundreds of years if not for the Civil War.
Colonial slavery though was a lost battle from the start. Colonial powers needed to develop their colonies, but the moment you do that you increase the chance of successful rebelion. The only way to defuse it is to reduce the oppression.
The Founding Fathers didn't have a shared opinion on the issue, and the only concrete action they jointly took was directly protect it and to bake in extra political power for slavers.
> but had to compromise lest the fragile Union break before it could form
The people those founding fathers who wanted slavery eventually eliminated had to compromise with were also founding fathers.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/colonial-complai...
Also, self organization is an important feature of a complex system.