Guest Commentary

In Their Own Words: Founding Fathers Offer Advice on Current Affairs

By Nancy Jacques, 7-03-06

Taking to heart what Mark Twain said - "It’s old news but there’s nothing else the matter with it" – I’ve called upon elders from the past to comment on the current state of this country’s affairs.

So, reader, bone up on the contents of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, and welcome former presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and the genius of Benjamin Franklin. Their familiarity with these documents is, shall we say, uncontested?

Gentlemen, welcome to the 21st century. There has been so much happening lately, I hardly know where to begin. Citizens still seem committed to the nation’s founding principles, at least in sentiment, but evidence reveals not so the federal government.

About five years ago, we were attacked by terrorists. Fear began governing. We attacked a nation unrelated to the aggression. Congress passed a so-called “Patriot Act,” wherein section 215 disregards constitutional rights. We’ve violated international and domestic laws by torturing prisoners, incarcerating them indefinitely without due process, and citizens are being wiretapped without court consent, as established by Congress in 1978.

Madison: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

There’s more. Our current president claims he has authority to dismiss all or part of more than 750 laws passed by Congress since he took office. Sounds like the King George you once knew, doesn’t it?

Madison: “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

I realize all this counters the principles you worked tirelessly to set forth. What’s worse, where’s the vehement national outrage?

Madison: “There are particular moments in public affairs, when the people stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.”

Jefferson: “It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order; and those who have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantages.”

Then, please, remind us of what you intended, and what you feared.

Adams: “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”

Jefferson: ”I said to President Washington that if the equilibrium of the three great bodies, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, could be preserved, if the Legislature could be kept independent, I should never fear the result of such a government; but that I could not but be uneasy when I saw that the Executive had swallowed up the Legislative branch.”

So Congress should aggressively manage its own affairs, especially since the President wants more budgetary line-item veto power?

Madison: “If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.”

Evident is your wisdom, while you raise another issue: the responsibility of citizens to be engaged and well-informed. But I’m concerned, not about freedom of the press, about a changing model of journalism from in-depth analysis to entertainment. I’m appalled at the avoidance of substance by instead attacking the character of a person, and language crafted to bend attitudes without inviting critical thought. We call it “spin.”

Adams: “Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society. Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”

Thank you, sirs. Your stay being short, I’ll save other domestic questions for another time. What final words have you for this tenuous era of change?

Jefferson: “[A legislative body should not] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes and conclude that unlimited powers will never be abused because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people, when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic, and will be alike influenced by the same causes.”

Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

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