This is because the founding fathers are a major component of the US "civic religion". The founders are seen to be unequivocally good and prophetic, to the extent where questioning anything they thought or did is considered unacceptable. It is strongly preferred for people to tie their ideas and initiatives back to the founding fathers in some way, instead of going against the grain and suggesting that people could be fallible or that some centuries-old laws may need to be updated once in a while.

The US is a very backwards-looking country, which leads to some good things but also other effects that aren't seen in most other countries. A major legal theory in the US now is that laws should be interpreted based on what we think the people at the time meant by them, rather than what the writings actually say. Any large-scale political reform is disfavored - the US has effectively stopped editing its constitution half a century ago, and under the sea of laws that were derived from its "founding documents", you still have 18th century law. This, in combination with the founding fathers stuff, means that every political argument is given an escape hatch - why prove that your idea is actually good for anyone, when you can just try to hammer down that this is "what the founding fathers would have wanted"?

I think this is an easy position to state but difficult to hold and defend. Norms and traditions are important just look at America right now when the president decided the norms established by a bunch of dumb dead people don't matter. I think the position is easy to state because a lot of people of the past did horrible things in the context of the present. But they also at many different generations opposed horrible things when no one else did. What Thomas Jefferson said for example in the declaration of independence all Man are created equal mattered for the emancipation in 1865 and also mattered to woman 1920.

The words of dead people shape a tremendous amount of law and norms that make the world better. The importantance incrementalism cannot be overstated nor can the infuration at that said incrementalism can be overstated, in the past and now. To say we don't care because we can't see the relevance is observational error.

I'd be curious of your country of origin because I guarentee you have legacy members of culture that matter politically speaking. But there are also examples of mathematicians long dead that have had lasting effect on things we still teach today. They are founders of a different field of sorts.

I actually agree that Norms and Traditions are important, but I don't think they have a functional link to the beliefs of historical figures. Norms are better understood, I think, in the same vein as oral tradition; passed down directly from one generation to the next, slowly changing over time.

On the other hand, I'm not particularly invested in the personal moral evil or good of people in the past. When I see similar opinions to mine expressed by Americans, they often give an argument of that ilk, but it seems to me to be rooted in the same belief that these long dead people should somehow have a say in the present. The fundamental reason their opinion is irrelevant isn't because they're evil (a subject which I haven't studied, and won't present an opinion on either way), but because they've been dead for a couple hundred years.

I'm Australian, and while like all countries we have important historical figures, the culture surrounding them isn't at all like what I observe from the United States. While, for example, you'd be hard pressed to find someone arguing that Edmund Barton wasn't an important figure, I don't think anyone in the modern day really gives a shit what they thought.

The most mythologized figures in Aussie history would probably be: Captain Cook, Curtin, and Whitlam; but I don't think anyone views them in a similar vein.

I suspect the reason we don't have similar figures might come down to our lack of a civil war. We separated peacefully from the UK, and didn't really come out with any heroes to mythologize.

> just look at America right now when the president decided the norms established by a bunch of dumb dead people don't matter.

The current administration isn't taking the US in some completely random direction, they very knowingly exploit the unquestioning reverence for old-time America to their advantage. Thanks to originalism, the US has its best shot at going back in time by being able to shake the foundations of modern laws. The conservatives' best chance at snapping away some of the civic rights that were granted in the 20th century isn't actual policy proposals, its reinterpretations of old laws and rulings.

The US has never been as concerned with what dead people wanted as it is now, because dead people can't speak for themselves, and the US admin will exploit it by putting words in their mouths through reinterpretations of old writings. It's the strongest argument, because it lets them get away with not arguing anything important, but rather rely on the near-religious love for all things "old America" and then justify that this is what the people would have wanted, this is true freedom as they envisioned it. They aren't moving away from their legacy, they're weaponizing it with full knowledge of just how unshakable the civil religion is.

While all countries have their beloved figures, I can't think of any place quite like the US where so much air is wasted arguing not on the merits of things, but what someone thinks these dead people would've thought about in the past. Being able to tie your proposal to the founders in some way is a very strong argument for you, regardless of anything else. There is a difference between revering the mathematicians that discovered fundamental truths that we're building on to this day or writers who have laid the groundwork for modern culture, and thinking that (undoubtedly influential and intelligent) politicians from over two centuries back have had godlike foresight to set the one true course for all of society forever, and that questioning or altering any of their decisions is completely unacceptable.

Theory: the US was a very early republic (it's probably almost the oldest contiguous one), and, at the time it was created, it was _normal_ for countries to have a degree of mysticism about their leadership (generally a monarchy).

So, it attached a certain amount of that magic to the 'founding fathers'. And this never entirely went away. Meanwhile, republics became more common, and, elsewhere, the need for mysticism faded (it's not even particularly common in actual monarchies these days, Thailand excepted). "Is this really what [whoever came up with the current constitution] would have wanted" would be a pretty weird question in most countries, those people being recognised not to be omniscient. But a fairly standard question in the US.

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I'm kind of mixed on this take.

The country I come from (Australia) has a similar`ish racial makeup (about 70% white in Australia, vs about 63% in the USA), but I struggle to think of a similar set of values that ties us together. Notably, we also have significantly less political violence, so I don't think we're headed towards anarchy for a lack of one.

On the other hand, I see similar arguments coming from neighbouring countries. Notably both Malaysia and Indonesia have strong civic mythos.