Musings on the Founders & Current American Politics
Or why you should care about Old Dead White Guys
In April of 1777, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, of his state of mind and the difficulties that lay before him in trying to muster forces, monies, and faith in the newly declared American Republic. He wrote to her:
“Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.”
Merely 9 months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and another 6 years before the Revolution’s end, the struggles to determine the course of American democracy were great and yet still unforeseen. I’d like to take the opportunity to write a little about our Founders, well a few of them, at any rate. I make no claim to being a historian, but I am a political theorist who has studied the political writings and discourse of the time. Perhaps a few of my readers will have taken a course from me on American Political Thought or have been forced to read the Federalist Papers by some other overbearing professor. My musings today are merely a reflection on the birth of the United States, and where we find ourselves, now, 248 years later. Perhaps my musings will be helpful to some, or generate more debate, as all American politics has since the founding.
I am not going to make a particular political position in this brief essay on which political party of Presidential nominee I prefer. Those of you who know me, know my feelings on the matter. Rather, I want to take pause and to think of what the positions of the newly emerging American government faced, and how, today the same positions seem to be rearing their heads once more. I will let the Founders speak in their own words, on some of these same issues we face today.
I shall try to cite where I can, but you can call this a Saturday exercise in memory for those places without citations. Let us begin.
Recall, at issue was the status of the Colonies under the reign of King George the III. The politics of Britain at the time were to ignore the pleas from the Americans over taxation and representation. The King, for the most part, was rather feckless. Indeed, it wasn’t until after the end of the war that his mental faculties degraded to such an extent he was publicly known as “Mad King George”. (So some of Bridgerton seems historically accurate.)
In any event, the accumulation of grievances what they were, the Crown’s response to them, and the unique composition of so many great minds at the time lent all the necessary ingredients to revolution. After the war, however, these great minds had to set themselves towards the problem of governing. Governing a “republic” made of disparate States, each with their own self-interests, a wariness against too powerful a federal hold over the power of each State’s rights, and the need to establish the basic functioning of government, the rule of federal law, and the establishment of a standing army.
On the side of the Federalists, or those who believed in stronger federal powers over states, were the likes of John Adams, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. On the side of the Anti-Federalists (and then later called the Democratic-Republicans) who believed in greater State’s rights and limited federal governance, you had figures such as Thomas Jefferson.
We may quibble over where exactly people fell along which lines, to be sure. Instead of focusing solely on the issue of State’s rights, which of course is immense and nuanced, and was ultimately a major catalyst to the US Civil War, I want to focus instead on the position about the faith in the “common man.” Given we are talking about 18th century white men, we can be certain they felt that it meant people like them. However, let’s just make this more contemporary and talk about faith in “reasonable people.”
Jefferson was, for all intents and purposes, a walking contradiction. Yet, his faith in the ability of “ordinary” citizens to govern themselves, at local levels, was his primary calling card. He wanted routine Constitutional Conventions, whereby the US Constitution would be revised, rewritten, or even thrown out. Indeed, his feelings on rebellion were quite extreme by today’s standards. In 1787, he wrote:
“The people can not be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 States independant 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
The idea, of course, is that the people must partake in politics and be well informed. Jefferson worried that the election of representatives would separate citizens from their civic duties, making them despondent to politics—or worse—blindly allowing power to creep its way into politics to the extent of going back to a monarchical or tyrannical (the same for him) state. He worried about those who sought out office as doing so for corrupt or “aggrandizing” motives. Even Madison agreed that the importance of citizens remaining “vigilant” about the goings on of their representatives and elected officials was paramount.
Yet when it came to elections and representatives, here is what the Federalists argued (in Paper 57):
“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied on in this form of government for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.”
All of the Founders at this time believed in both the angels and devils of human nature. How to design a system that incentivized the angels or at least constrained the devils was their work. As Hamilton (or Madison) claim in this paper, we want our rulers to be wise, virtuous, and with a view to the common good of all society…. How we keep them that way, however, is a matter of system design and the rule of law. Side note- Madison also thought that constant Constitutional Conventions would be a disaster. Instead, he sought to preserve the authoritative status of the Constitution and to rarely touch it.
Yet, Madison was also quite clear eyed about the dangers of democracy and the rise of populism. For today’s discussions in America, Federalist 10 holds a very strong ring…
“The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.”
I could spend all day writing on factions, as well as the genius of the divisions and balance of powers developed by the Founders. (Which, let us be clear, today’s distribution of power looks nothing like.) I will not stay here long.
The point, though, is that the discussions happening after the end of the American Revolution and before and after the signing of the Constitution, were not that different than the discussions before us TODAY. They were discussions about: the authorities and powers granted to the government; the extent of those powers to dictate the private lives of citizens; the necessary limits on powers granted to all bodies of government (legislative, executive, and judicial); and how to best formulate laws and governance for the good of the entire people. Virtues and vices, self-interest and magnanimity, State’s rights versus Federal power, the character of the rulers and the people, and ultimately the way to preserve the Republic against tyranny were their focus. Where, as Madison rightly notes:
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
While Madison and his compatriots felt that the unique division between the three powers would act against the aggregation of too much power in one branch, he did not foresee the ways in which “factions,” would actually circumvent his creative solution. He put too much credence on factions balancing or canceling each other out. Over the last almost 250 years, the federal government has shifted and changed in ways probably unrecognizable to the Founders. To say nothing of one party or ideology dominating all three branches.
This is not to say that we should all go back to their visions. Clearly, I’d be chained to some stove in a kitchen, minding children with no voice, right to vote, or guarantee of education. Nor would we have the 13, 14, and 15 Amendments, though also the almost 100 years before more legislation to guarantee those rights in the Civil Rights Act. I will leave the continually abysmal and horrid treatment of all of the Sovereign Native American nations as another area to which the US continues to fail. The country is not perfect, but as you can see, from a few of these quotes, the Founders never thought it was.
Even in Jefferson’s later years, he attempted to enumerate some of his contributions to this society. Musing on whether he was important!
His thoughts, captured in A Memorandum (Services to My Country) in 1800, list some of these very important and great contributions (though he seems to question his personal relevance):
“I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing and the following of things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps a little better. […]
The Declaration of Independence
I proposed the demolition of the church establishment, and the freedom of religion. It could only be done by degrees; to wit, the Act of 1776, c. 2, exempted dissenters from contributions to the church, and left the church clergy to be supported by voluntary contributions of their own sect; was continued from year to year, and made perpetual in 1779, c. 36. I prepared the act for religious freedom in 1777, as part of the revisal, which was not reorted to the Assembly till 1779, and that particular law not passed till 1785, and then by the efforts of Mr. Madison.
The act putting an end to entails.
The act prohibiting the importation of slaves.
The act concerning citizens, and establishing the natural right of man to expatriate himself, at will.
[…]
Whether the act for the more general diffusion of knowledge will ever be carried into complete effect, I know not. It was received by the legislature with great enthusiasm at first; and a small effort was made in 1776, by the act to establish public schools, to carry a part of it into effect, viz., that for the establishment of free English schools; but the option given to the courts has defeated the intention of the act.”
These thoughts, or rather enumerations of actual significant events and legislation, show that he too felt that things were never quite “done.” A “more perfect union” could be achieved. But that requires that each generation fight for these principles, fight for freedom and not tyranny, truth and not merely accumulation of power, and use one’s common sense and reason to see when these issues are at stake.
To finish again with Jefferson, though I am more of a Madisonian if I am honest, I will leave you with this:
“I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many. […] Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigations of their actions. The firmness with which the people have withstood the late abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false, and to form a correct judgment between them. As little is it necessary to impose on their senses, or dazzle their minds by pomp, splendor, or forms. Instead of this artificial, how much surer is that real respect, which results from the use of their reason, the habit of bringing everything to the test of common sense. I hold it, therefore certain, that to open the doors of truth, and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason, are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent.” (A Letter to Judge John Tyler, 1804).
So as we look to today’s society and American politics, I urge you all to use your common reason.
--Publius Secundus