In the United States we often look
up to our founding fathers with a respect that you don’t always see in other
countries. In fact, the one thing most Americans agree on is that the founders
were great men -- then it all goes wrong from there. Not always of course,
Americans pulling together have undoubtedly accomplished great things. But to
tackle at least one of the elephants in the room: the Civil War was definitely not
a high point in U.S. history. It was the mother of all pyrrhic victories if there ever was one, with approximately 625,000 self-inflicted deaths. That's over 50% higher
than the American casualties of World War II -- and therein lies the elephant: it
seems the enemy within is always the toughest foe.
Which is why our founding fathers must
have had their fair share of existentialist dilemmas. Fighting a tyrannical
government requires a well-armed militia -- until the tyrannical government is
defeated. Then all of a sudden you are
the government of a well-armed militia with an itchy trigger finger.
Our second president and founding
father John Adams tackled the militia dilemma this way: “Never judge a king until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes.” I’m
kidding, of course. He might as well have said that, but what he actually said
was, “To suppose arms in the hands of
citizens, to be used at individual discretion, except in private self-defense,
or by partial orders of towns, countries or districts of a state, is to
demolish every constitution, and lay the laws prostrate, so that liberty can be
enjoyed by no man; it is a dissolution of the government. The fundamental law
of the militia is, that it be created, directed and commanded by the laws, and
ever for the support of the laws.” (From “A Defence of the Constitutions of
the United States 475 (1787-1788)”)
As if that table-turning moment wasn’t
enough for John Adams, the matter of God and King -- sorry, God and Country --
must have caused some heavy soul-searching for him. The original U.S.
Constitution only had one reference to religion, and it was a limiting
one at that [Article 6]: “No religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust
under the United States.” Even 100 years later, the original Pledge of
Allegiance did not contain the words “under
God”. That was inserted in 1954 by Animal
Farm’s Napoleon. But in the pig’s
defense: why on earth would our founding fathers, surely God-fearing men
themselves, go through such trouble to keep God and religion out of the
Constitution? Enter stage yet another foul-smelling animal: a doctrine known as
The Divine Right of Kings.
In the 1500’s, over three hundred
Protestants were burnt at the stake in England under "Bloody Mary" -- a Catholic-based persecution of Protestants, essentially
because God told Queen Mary he was cool with it. When Thomas Wyatt the younger
instigated what became known as Wyatt's rebellion, John Ponet, the
highest-ranking ecclesiastic among those escaping persecution, allegedly
participated in the uprising. He escaped after the rebellion's defeat, and
subsequently published A Shorte Treatise
of Politike Power. According to John
Adams, Ponet's work
contained "all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterward
dilated on by Sidney and Locke", including the idea of a
three-branched government.
And there it was, humanity’s first
notion of an accountable government
had been conceived. The proverbial over-the-head light bulb had switched on for great
thinkers, starting with Mr. Age of
Enlightenment himself, John Locke. Opposition to the Divine Right of Kings spread like lit gunpowder, from John Milton’s
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates to Locke's Essay Concerning The True Original Extent, and
End of Civil-Government. But the
mother of all declarations against tyranny, divine or otherwise, was finally written
by one Thomas Jefferson and his lesser-known collaborator, John Adams. Jefferson
and Adams were indeed God-respecting men; but they left us with no doubt that
what they did not respect was the idea of men governing with claims to God’s will.
Four score and seven years later,
Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg Address, did in fact say “this nation, under God”. But he also made
certain that those same words were immediately followed by words that could
have just as well been written by Jefferson and Adams: “a government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
Yes, we may
not like the people, sometimes. OK,
who am I kidding, most of the time. In the words of Helmut Schmidt, (West)
Germany’s Chancellor during the late 70’s: “The
Americans are what they are, but they are the only Americans we have.” I
will trust imperfect Americans to govern over me, even if I don’t always agree
with them. But I will line up behind enlightened men in revolution
against tyranny, if our leader or leaders one day declare they’re on a mission from
God (with all due respect to Jake and Elwood Blues).
---
“The question before
the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own
laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?”
- John
Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, June 20, 1815
--
I know it will give
great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect
neither peace nor forgiveness from them.
- Thomas
Jefferson
