Have we learned nothing in 238 years?

I never understood why someone would try to make an argument by pointing to the founding fathers.  For starters, this implies an assumption that they were all in agreement. They were not, they fought each other with the same level of intensity (and sometimes more) then even the most heated debates today.  But this is only tangential to the point I would like to make here.

Pointing to the founding fathers to try to make an argument also implies that they were smarter than we are today.  This is quite obviously not true.  I'm not trying to say that they were dumb, only that we have come a long way in developing our scientific knowledge.  I have neither the time nor the energy to go through and list all of the things we have learned since our country was founded, luckily though wikipedia does.  Check out this page and look for dates after 1776, these are all things our founding fathers couldn't have possibly known about.  Even this list is hardly exhaustive, it only talks about hard sciences and makes no mention of the progress we've made in social sciences.

Consider this: George Washington was known to engage in blood letting as a medical cure for his ailments.  Perhaps we should subject those who defend their positions by pointing to the founding fathers to the same medical treatments in use during the 1800's.  I'd say we should prevent them from getting immunizations, but it seems like they are willingly pursuing that option already.  Maybe we could burn them for being witches or tar and feather them for their legal violations.  I don't know what we can do to show them that we are so much better and smarter than civilization in 1776.  I would say that we could take away all of their rights unless they are rich white men, but it seems like most of these people are rich white men.

Did I mention that most of these people were atheists who didn't support maintaining standing armies?  Come to think of it, maybe these guys are smarter than us...