Growing up as a working class kid in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was my guy. By the age of 11 we had mastered the trolley system, and spent many a happy hour roaming the cobblestone streets of our historic city. We often snuck into the tour groups and listened to the guides talk about the early history of our country. We walked to the library and lugged home armfuls of books about the Founding Fathers and souvenir copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution adorned our bedroom walls. The founding fathers were our kind of people – they were rebels, they hung out in Paris, ran around with women, argued all the time and cussed like bandits. So now, when I hear people talk about them as if they were saints, and act as if the Constitution was the Bible, I am both amused and horrified.

Ben Franklin, born on Jan. 17, 1706, lived to the age of 84, and was a polymath without peer. A major figure in the American Enlightenment, he was a writer, scientist, civic activist, statesman and diplomat. Often called “The First American,” he campaigned for colonial unity and championed the democratic values of education and community. As one of the Committee of Five who drafted the Declaration of Independence, he made changes to the document that Thomas Jefferson wrote. When that document was signed, he said “We must all hang together.” He greatly influenced the writing of the Constitution, and advocated a strong Republic, and a system of checks and balances, which was supported by the other signers as well.

All of these men were a combination of idealist and pragmatist, and they knew full well that they were not infallible. They deliberately designed a document that could be amended to fit the times to come. The Constitution is not written on stone tablets, it was not carried down a mountain, and it is most certainly the words of men. I’m sure these men occasionally drank tea, but whiskey was their drink of preference.

Well, I, for one, and many others of like mind, don’t plan to let the tea party corrupt our Constitution and try to rewrite or reinterpret it to their liking. Their combination of mythology and lies is extremist. Now we even have two Supreme Court Justices, Anthony Scalia and Clarence Thomas, becoming involved with the Koch brothers, and the Republican members of Congress, a clear violation of the separation of powers. The idea that Social Security, Medicare, environmental protection, and aid to education are unconstitutional is ludicrous, and dumbing down the Constitution is an insult to the American people.

Sorry, guys, but I’m pretty sure the Founding Fathers would laugh at y’all, and they wouldn’t do it wearing fake hats from long ago, or togas, even though they admired the Greeks. The Constitution belongs to all of us. As Thomas Jefferson said in his Inaugural Address, “We are all Federalists, we are all Republicans.” Once you get used to that idea, we may be able to have a country of brotherly, and sisterly, love — just like Philadelphia was the City of Brotherly Love when it was the capital of our nation.