[LexBaird]

They're idealists, which is worse.

Worse that socialists? I disagree. Without Idealists there would be no America, land of the free, home of the Brave, only another British colony.

From the ranks of the Idealists comes the Fanatics. There isn't a fanatic out there who isn't also an idealist. The Taliban were idealists, the Bolsheviks were, Pol Pot was, Mao was. The Puritans, Robespierre, and the SS were. Ralph Bloody Nader is an idealist.

Giving an idealist power is like giving a teenage boy a fifth of Jack Daniels and the keys to your car, to paraphrase PJ O'Rourke.

Give me a pragmatist, who at least tries to foresee the consequences of his actions, any day.

The balance of powers set up in the Constitution show that the FF's weren't dewy-eyed pollyannas basing the Republic on pure idealism. They took the ideas from the idealists and make them practical for all. You note the real fire-eaters, like Tom Paine were never in charge.

[wimpycat]

Exactly. Our Founding Fathers were idealists, but were also realists and practical to boot.

What makes this country great (and the Europeans despise us) is that we want things that work, and we don't spend an inordinate amount of time (like the Europeans) pondering and ruminating and agonizing over concepts. We just do it.

Go-getters who took risks and rolled up their shirt-sleeves and just did it are what made this country great.

[EBUCK]

No, the Federalists were not Idealists, they were psuedo statists who intentionally left the language of the constitution vauge and subject to interpretation, as pointed out at the time by the anti-federalists. But the real Fathers or our country (the instigators of the Revolution, who in their time were considered "fanatics") certainly were idealists who, after winning, didn't act like drunk 16 year olds, they gave us the articles of confederation (when in reality they could have been royalty). The AoC, if you remember were a very weak set of rules meant to govern lightly and in limited fashion.

EBUCK