“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
John Adams, the second President of the United States, penned these words to a friend in 1814.[1] If we look at the United States today, should we be worried about impending doom, as John Adams foretold in 1814? Amidst the seemingly daily discovery of government corruption,[2] the unprecedented extent of government interference in the freedom of the press[3], accusations of fraud in the democratic process[4], and the ever-growing reach and power of the federal government – could we be witnessing the demise of our beloved democratic republic? In 1887, the Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote about the nature of democracies: "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship." Confronted with this prospect, I feel compelled to return to our Founding Fathers and examine the vision they had for the United States of America.[5] Benjamin Franklin: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Samuel Adams: "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." Richard Henry Lee: “It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.” John Adams: “I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge, unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?" Thomas Jefferson: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.” Put more eloquently and in more detail, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "Whereas it appears that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience has shown, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibits, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes." When Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French thinker of the early nineteenth century, visited the United States, he wrote: “It cannot be doubted that, in the United States, the instruction of the people powerfully contributes to the support of a democratic republic; and such must always be the case, I believe, where instruction which awakens the understanding is not separated from moral education which amends the heart.” What are the Founding Fathers and Tocqueville telling us? Their statements revolve around two principles: the importance of a virtuous people and the importance of an educated people. Without these, democracy as developed by our ancestors and as we know it today cannot exist. But how is this relevant today? Well, while this may be surprising to some, Studies and a shocking variety of anecdotal evidence indicate that the American people – particularly teenagers and young adults – are very poorly educated when it comes to the fundamentals of American history and the basic processes and characteristics of our governmental system and founding document, the Constitution. Take these for example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkFDcX_72c http://www.businessinsider.com/poll-many-americans-dont-know-basic-facts-about-government-2014-9 http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Study-Americans-Dont-Know-About-Much-About-History.html Given the statements of our Founders quoted above and the common sensical reality that a population that has the freedom to choose its own leaders should be well educated, the historical illiteracy of our people should be unsettling. Popular culture has hijacked our minds, convincing us that “keeping up with the Kardashians” and knowing to whom Brad Pitt is married, who is on the latest edition of Dancing with the Stars, and what is the latest drama on the Jersey Shore (okay, that one is a little outdated, but so is my familiarity with popular culture) are more important than knowing truly important things such as the basic tenets of the two parties that dominate our political system or the long-term significance of our $17 trillion dollar national debt. If we continue to prioritize popular culture and neglect American history, government, politics, and contemporary international issues, we will become a people wholly unfit for the system our Founders created. So what about the second part of the quotes I listed above? What about virtue? This indicates another problem I would like to highlight. Our public school system has abdicated its responsibility to provide its people with a civic education. Instead of teaching our kids to cultivate manners and respect, we grant them ever more individual freedoms and privileges at younger and younger ages for which they are not ready. Instead of instilling in them a sense of gratitude and humility, we present to them a growing list of “entitlements.” Instead of offering our kids a vision, ideals for which they can strive and role models they can try to emulate, we teach them that there is no “right” or “wrong” way and abandon them to their youthfully impetuous whims. Instead of emphasizing to them the importance of performing our civic duties and being productive citizens of a democratic society, we tell them that they are powerless victims of an oppressive system. Instead of revealing to our kids what a great fortune and a blessing it is to live in these United States of America, we increasingly tell them merely how incomparably horrifying and disgraceful our past is and how ashamed we should be of it. While the cultural currents that have led to this pedagogical and cultural decay are infinitely complicated and multifaceted, there is one unifying thread to it all: the exclusion of God from public life. We have taken Him out of our education curricula, banished Him from the public sphere, and locked Him away in the churches across our nation, as if to say: “in there you can stay, God, but don’t you dare show your ugly head outside of those church doors!” As a result, we have lost our moral compass; we have lost our vision; we have lost our sense of what is good and what is not. In God’s place, we have erected a culture of self-worship that exalts a relativism that can only lead to confusion, emptiness, and self-destruction. But more on that another time…the point is, to return to the beginning of this post: we are rapidly transforming into a people wholly unfit for the system our founding document set up for us. Uneducated, uninformed, uninterested, devoid of a solid moral conscience, and cultivating the wrong priorities – we are becoming unfit for the privilege of choosing our leaders and holding them accountable. We are becoming unsuitable for a democratic system, and as we continue traveling down this dark and ominous road that is littered with frightening historical precedents, we may yet, as Benjamin Franklin said, “have more need of masters” than individual liberty. ___________________________________________________________________________________ [1] http://www.foundingfatherquotes.com/father/id/1/s/30#section=quotes [2] I don’t deem it necessary to provide links for this accusation. Whatever your political leanings, hopefully it is sufficiently clear to you that whether it is the Center for Disease Control spreading misinformation, the IRS targeting specific people, the Department of Justice and its wealth of scandals, Republican or Democratic officials, or the White House itself – our government is rife with corruption. [3] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/02/the-united-states-just-finished-46th-in-a-press-freedom-contest/283798/; http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/ex-cbs-reporter-government-related-entity-bugged-my-computer/; http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/10/27/usa-todays-susan-page-obama-administration-most-dangerous-to-media-in-history/ [4] http://www.nationalreview.com/article/391474/non-citizens-are-voting-john-fund; http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/10/29/massive-non-citizen-voting-uncovered-in-maryland/; http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S3607682.shtml#.VFcXqvnF-_U; http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/10/28/voting-machine-in-maryland-changes-votes-for-republicans-to-votes-for-democrats-n1910991 [5] I cross-checked these statements to verify their historical veracity and to ensure that they did not end up on “Snopes” or a website dedicated to quotations falsely attributed to our Founders.
1 Comment
Jordan
11/2/2014 07:49:53 pm
Nice footnotes! Very thorough. Love the analysis man, and the research you did. I had heard something like that quote on "voting themselves generous gifts" but you nailed it and then some. That just about sums up our last two elections, and I would almost argue the Democratic Party
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorChristopher is a student in the Ph.D. program in History at the University of North Carolina. He enjoys following sports, going to church on Sundays, and discussing contemporary issues in American society. Archives
Mai 2015
Categories |