> Well they sure didn't fight against it
It was fairly well documented that the Founding Fathers were pretty much all opposed to slavery, but saw it as a huge political shit sandwich that would jeopardize Federalization. The United States is one of the only unions on the planet in which every single member state (without exception) voluntarily ratified and agreed to join. Had the Founding Fathers pushed for abolition, the South would never have joined the Union, and slavery may not have been abolished in the 1860s.
> Slaveholders outnumbers non-slaveholders 2:1 and men outnumbered women 1:0.
Yes, because the population of the South outnumbered that of the North. This is why the Founding Fathers installed various checks and balances to ensure that a pro-slavery political majority doesn’t outnumber the pro-abolition minority at the Federal level. The Three-Fifths Compromise was put in place to dilute the South’s influence in the Federal government; whereas the Southern slave states wanted to count slaves for apportionment despite slaves obviously being unable to vote. In fact, it was essentially an incentive to abolish slavery, since the way that it was worded, it only applied to “non-free Persons”; if the South wanted more power over the Federal legislature, all they had to do was abolish slavery. The Senate, as an institution, was put in place as a check on the more populous South, which advocated for a unicameral legislature apportioned strictly by population (the Virginia Plan).
Finally, a really good way to understand how the Founders felt about slavery is to look at how those that literally advocated for starting a new nation based fundamentally on the institution of slavery (the Confederates) felt about the Founding Fathers. The Cornerstone Speech was an address given by the Vice President of the CSA just before the Civil War began, and includes commentary around how they felt about the “old Constitution” and its framers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech#Cornerstone
The relevant bit:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution, African slavery as it exists amongst us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.””
So the idea that the Founders “fought for slavery” or in any way were responsible for its existence is just ahistorical revisionism, up there with Confederates arguing that the Civil War was about “states rights” and not about “slavery”.
> My point remains that they were fallible humans, and it's really strange to hear folks appeal to these proto-deities 300 years later on matters of modern economics.
> Nobody in England asks "What would William Pitt the Elder do?" [2] - I'm not sure, but I suspect it wouldn't be compatible with modern life.
At the time the US Constitution was written, the concept of a creedal nation obtaining its legitimacy from a governing document, in it providing checks & balances to limit the power of government, along with a bill of rights that guarantee broad protection of rights pertaining to speech, bearing arms, impartial trial, privacy (searches and seizures) — was truly unique to the US. That it is now commonplace in the West is a testament to one of America's many lasting contributions to the world. The Founding Fathers set that trend, and that’s why we talk about their philosophies; the very concept of a liberal republic under the rule of law flows from the principles and ideals that they documented. All of those ideas are agnostic to sex or race; their articulated arguments in favor of individual liberty and the freedom of speech (for example) don't lose any merit when you make them in the context of men, women, Black people, or brown people. The Founding Fathers of the US also essentially wrote the equivalent of an entire RFC alongside the actual document — the Federalist Papers — which were a profound exposition on political science and philosophy. This was a historical aberration, and you can’t say any of this about William Pitt the Elder.
Also, for the sake of argument, even if one were to accept that the Founders “fought for slavery” (they absolutely did not, but let’s just say), bringing that up in a conversation about monetary policy doesn’t make any sense. It’s like disregarding any argument about racial justice made by Martin Luther King Jr because he allegedly abused women (https://theconversation.com/im-an-mlk-scholar-and-ill-never-...).