On April 10^th, 2013, on my blog, (Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness), I discussed how Mahatma Gandhi’s definition of happiness applied to our Founding Fathers, when the 55 delegates all gathered  in Philadelphia between May and September, 1787, to write the Constitution.

Having just come off winning a hard fought and bloody Revolutionary War, our Founding Fathers were all of similar or of like minds in thinking they wanted to assure each other and the country that what they did at the Constitutional Convention was a recipe in how to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for future generations to enjoy. With that as the main goal, regardless of their varied cherished beliefs and personal objectives, preserving democracy and the tenets as written in the Constitution was the overriding objective at the convention. Consequently, they were willing to make compromises to help at least partially accommodate each others’ wishes and desires of how they saw the Constitution’s final draft to be.

Whether outwardly expressed, or inwardly contained, just imagine the joy and good will they felt toward one another when they were all able to reach common agreement to what needed to be said in the Constitution’s writing.

I would imagine that according to Gandhi, our Founding Fathers would have experienced happiness because there was a meeting of like minds so that what they thought, what they said and what they achieved were in harmony with one another. That is until George Mason, a delegate from Virginia, refused to sign the Constitution because there was a lack of an explicit statement outlining state and individual rights. What Mason feared was a tyranny of the majority unless those state and individual rights were clearly delineated.

Because political parties had yet to exist, where biases were formed, all of which would have caused disharmony and division between and among political thought and discussion, the delegates to the Constitution were more willing to ‘hear’ what Mason feared and, after much discussion, were willing to accommodate his   thinking to everyone’s satisfaction. All of this I discuss in my book What Would Our Founding Fathers Say?: How Today’s Leaders Have Lost Their Way.

Because of the lack of political parties, when the delegates gathered to write the Constitution, our Founding Fathers were not narcissistically thinking about themselves and how they or their party could benefit by what they said and did, as appears to be the political atmosphere in today’s party politics. What promoted like-mindedness in thought and action was, in one context or another, many of the delegates had been together for twelve years, when the 1^st and 2^nd Continental Congresses were formed to deal with England’s many colonial abuses, and to help write and ratify the Articles of Confederation, which was used to help General Washington’s Continental Army become victorious in the Revolutionary War. Over that time, the Founding Fathers developed a deep admiration and respect for one another, all of which nurtured an openness and honesty during their frank discussions as to what needed to be considered in writing the Constitution.

Because of the relationships they developed over time, they were not sullied and violated by championing discordant and selfish individual and party goals, which clearly dominates political discourse today.

When compared to the 1700s, today’s politics involve special interests’ money and various political power abuses. Malignant and malevolent influences have replaced our Founding Father’s love of their fellow man and working toward something greater than themselves. This community effort was achieved only through responding to their integrities and appreciating what each fellow patriot had endured prior to the Constitution’s writing. This appreciation gave our Founding Fathers a unique perspective in what needed to be written in that sacred document, our Constitution that would stand the test of time.

Like wanting a newborn, or neonate, to thrive through tender loving care (TLC), the Founding Fathers treated our fledging country in a similar way. That could only have happened if they were of like minds, and spoke in a common voice, being respectful for the rights of all American citizens to be able to speak their opinions via the Constitutional delegations. It was only through thoughtful compromise, where what was thought, what was said and what was achieved were in harmony with their fellow delegation and reflected the thoughts of many of their fellow freedom loving citizens of whom they represented. The principles for living happy and fulfilled lives are the same for the common man and woman in the 1700s, as is true for all of us today.

In my next blog I will speak to how we have an untapped reservoir of ordinary freedom loving citizens who have the cherished humane, patriotic and love of country qualities that our fellow patriots and Founding Fathers had in common when our country was born.