The Forefathers, Recoiling Democracy and The Lost Art of Critical Thinking

I was thinking about the framers of the American Constitution earlier this evening.

It never occurred to me how in one sitting in one particular era how many men of pure genius were gathered. Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Franklin all these men were literate men of the highest degree.

Jefferson may have been a yeoman and Hamilton a Federalist but they were my kind of yeoman and federalist. Reading that incredibly and enlightened (almost spooky in its predictions) document fills me with rage and sadness. Where do you see such men these days? The whole idea of America has been hijacked. The very things that the forefathers sought to guard against has emerged to rip apart American democracy - special interest, rampant corporations, military complex etc. No one is checking and balancing anything these days. Michael Moore may see himself as a dissenter or patriot but he's more like what the forefathers were trying to guard against.

People and citizens alike simply can't tell their elbows from their asses, fiction from history and reality anymore. We live in a strange prism of dead intellectualism where the patients have taken over the asylum. People are fond of reading the forefathers but do they comprehend?

Can we be saved?