America at 250, confessions of a late blooming patriot on the principles and personalities that founded the greatest country in the world

It wasn’t until college when I was transformed by a James Madison quote, a timeless statement of truth, the equivalent of political poetry, illuminating something deep inside the heart of us all:  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

I’ll confess:  I wasn’t exactly a patriot early in life.  A born cynic, probably a bit too self-centered and cocksure for his own good, I didn’t really care about being an American throughout high school and most of college, not believing it to be more special than anything else.  At the time, I might well have agreed with President Barack Obama’s infamous statement, “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”  To some extent, I can attribute this lack of interest to simply being young and dumb, far more interested in hanging out with my friends, drinking beers, smoking doobies, and chasing girls than actually learning about what made American great, but there’s also the sense that even back in the 1990s, schools spent little time teaching what separated America’s Founding from other countries and how extraordinary that founding was in the first place.  At least where I went to school, history was essentially taught as a collection of dates, places, and names, as if the past could be reduced to a system of coordinates with an arrow indicating the sequence.  Though I was a pretty restless youngster, almost certain to be diagnosed with ADHD today, I don’t think even the most studious of my classmates would describe the experience as anything except boring with rote memorization being substituted for insight and inspiration.  Perhaps even worse, even if I didn’t realize it at the time, there was also the implicit assumption that the future was fixed in some hard to define fashion, that were would inevitably be a Declaration of Independence, a victory against Britain, a drafting and ratification of the Constitution, and America was destined to become the world’s superpower, rather than the reality that all of these events and more were highly contingent, based upon the people that were present, making countless decisions, most of which were hotly debated at the time, some of which could have resulted in their deaths, in ways that could’ve led to a completely different outcome.

In college, however, my perspective began to change.  The combination of classes that relied more on primary sources than stale textbooks followed by open discussions rather than endless quizzes and the 1996 campaign between President Bill Clinton and Republican Majority Leader Bob Dole started a transformation that hasn’t stopped since.  Instead of being bored, I became immersed, eager to learn more about why the country I’d taken for granted up until then – to be clear, I do not mean this in any negative way, much less that I hadn’t enjoyed being an American to that point – was the way it was and not something else.  While I was a film major at NYU, a friend of mine was a political science major at Lehigh University and in addition to watching all three debates between President Bill Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole on campus, one of his professors had written a book If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason that introduced me to the philosophy underlying the Founding for the first time in any sort of depth.  Though Professor Richard K. Matthews intended to mount a scathing critique of the Father of the Constitution, what critics called “devastating,” claiming he had ushered in the “Heartless Empire of Reason” and had done so as something of a Machiavel, changing his positions to suit the needs of the moment, we didn’t quite see it that way, knowing even that that academia possessed an insidious bias.  Instead, the Madison quote the title was culled from stood out as a timeless statement of truth, the equivalent of political poetry that illuminated something deep inside the heart of us all:  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  

To me at least, this wasn’t merely a piece of history, a fact to be remembered.  It was a statement about the nature and organization of the world that illustrated a fundamental fact about the nature of our relationship to the government more so than anything else I’d encountered to that time.  For most of my young life at that point, not only had I taken the United States for granted, but freedom itself.  Sure, I’d learned about the Bill of Rights and how we were guaranteed the ability to do certain things, to decide certain matters for ourselves, either of conscience, action, or property, but I’d never really stopped to consider the more fundamental significance.  Why those specific things?  How do they compare to other countries, both at the time of the Founding and today?  Perhaps needless to say, it’s incredibly difficult to cast my mind back three decades to recreate what about this particular quote I found so intriguing, why it struck me as it did and opened the door to greater discovery, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was in the way Madison inverted the usual assumptions.  Rather than considering the world as it is, he asked us to consider what the world would look like if we were higher, near perfect beings that required no external means of controlling or limiting our behavior.  If there were no disagreements or debates, no crimes or other betrayals of trust, no wars or other conflicts, no resources to be allocated or priorities to pursue, there would be no need for laws or the means to enforce them.  Instead, each of us would govern themselves according to our own will and desire, in harmony with each other and without fear or favor.  Alas, that is not the nature of humanity or the world we inhabit.  As the quote in full from Federalist 51 frames it, “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

At the same time, Madison and the other Founders embraced a tension equally fundamental to human nature and the nature of the governments we devise.  In addition to acknowledging the need to be governed in some fashion, they believed that, wherever possible, people should govern themselves, enshrining the concept of “self-government,” that is citizens given broad power to manage their own affairs, provided they do not infringe on others, in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  As he was with so many others, Thomas Jefferson was likely the most eloquent proponent of this concept, writing in 1790 that “Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government: they receive it with their being from the hand of nature.” Later, in his first inaugural address in 1801, he combined it with Madison’s previous writings, “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”  As was frequently the case, the Founders relied on principles that were previously established by the great thinkers of the 17th and 18th centuries, transforming them into practical systems of government.  Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan in 1651 introduced the idea that society elevates humanity from a raw “state of nature,” where individuals strike a bargain that exchanges personal freedom for order and security provided by some kind of ruling class.  John Locke’s Two Treatises on Government in 1689 more fully addressed the limits of that exchange, introducing the idea of natural rights to life, liberty, and property, and charging any acceptable form of government with protecting them.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau formalized the idea that this was a social contract, in a book of the same name in 1762.

Thus, the Constitution is perhaps best seen as a balancing act between these two extremes.  Empowering the government to perform certain functions while barring them from others.  While this approach has resulted in no shortage of criticism in recent years – none other than future President Barack Obama once claimed, “Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you. It says what the federal government can’t do to you. But it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf” – the structure is based on the two, inherent, indisputable poles of human nature.  On one side, we seek autonomy.  We want to be able to think what we will, say what we will, do what we will, and in order to prosper, achieving whatever happiness or satisfaction exists in this world, we need that freedom.  On the other, however, the goals, actions, and desires of one individual will necessarily come in conflict with another.  Even if we set aside the small percentage of the population that commit actual crimes, we don’t want the same things, say the same things, or do the same things.  In Hobbes’ true state of nature, the individuals in question would simply fight it out among themselves, but in that case the stronger would likely prevail, the person or group that could apply the most force, and society would be reduced to the old adage that might makes right.  The Founders recognized that the government was the sole authority and the only body that could use force, making it both essential to human flourishing and dangerous to it at the same time. To balance those concerns, they structured their own to ensure that force was used primarily to protect the freedom of its citizens from internal and external threats, while refraining from coercing them or compelling them against their will to acts that violate their conscience or their property.  While no system of government can ever be perfect, one with too little authority leads to anarchy or invasion, one with too much inevitably erodes freedom, or as we have also seen in recent years trades freedom of action and property for false security.  This made the United States both the first country in history founded on principle rather than customs, traditions, hereditary rule, divine right, or whatever, and the most influential country in terms of advancing freedom in the history of the known universe.

Principles are one thing, however, people another.  The Founders might well have embraced all of these ideas and more, and yet still failed to win our independence, much less bring the new country into being.  As I became aware of the principles, I started considering the uniqueness of the people involved.  What made it so that these men and women, at that point in time, could successfully found the most powerful country the world has ever known even at the risk to their own lives?  Madison himself never fought in the war and never led men into battle, but as a sickly man, who under went major surgery as a child, and who suffered bouts of fever and fits his entire life similar to epilepsy, simply traveling to and from Congress in those days without proper roads required a level of courage and stamina rarely seen. Though there are too many other stories to be told here, three uniquely American individuals come to mind, the indispensable man, George Washington, the principles above all else exemplar, John Adams, and the upstart, insatiable, jack of all trades, Alexander Hamilton.  Without them and of course many others, there would have been no revolution, constitution, or country in the first place.  Why?  What did they do that many in their position would not other than risking it all?  The question is impossible to answer in many ways, but we can try. From this perspective, Washington can perhaps be seen as the fulcrum around which the Founding revolved and within which everyone else orbited.  His unique stature as a wealthy landowner, an aristocrat in a country without aristocracy, and a hero during the French and Indian War gave the cause credibility it would never have had otherwise.  Beyond winning the war itself, he chose – not once, but twice – to relinquish almost absolute power, first after Britain surrendered, he turned the army back to the Continental Congress and then he retired after two terms as President.  How many others would have done the same?  Even back then, revolutions leading to new rulers were nothing new.  Rulers that put down their swords, almost totally unique, merely a few references across all of known history including Cincinnatus and Sulla and not many more.  The example he set in doing so made it clear to people and politicians alike that America was fundamentally different from any other country in the world.  Its rulers would come and go, and those out of power with different ideas about how to govern, need only make their argument to the people and earn their place in office rather than forcibly take power, providing both stability to the government and a voice for even minority opinions, which might one day become the majority without having to kill for it.

Adams didn’t fight in the war, but he put his reputation and life on the line six years before the Declaration of Independence when he chose to defend the British soldiers and their commanding officer, Captain Thomas Preston, after they opened fire on a crowd, killing five.  At the time, tensions between the colonists and the crown were fierce, and the public demanded blood in response.  Adams, however, believed the right to a fair trial and an attorney was sacrosanct, and rather than join the calls for blood, served as the British soldier’s lawyer, leading to the acquittal of the captain along with five of the men, and lesser charges for the others.  At Captain Preston’s trial, he began his closing argument by quoting an Italian philosopher, Marchese di Beccaria, “If, by supporting the rights of mankind, and of invincible truth, I shall contribute to save from the agonies of death one unfortunate victim of tyranny, or of ignorance, equally fatal, his blessings and years of transport will be sufficient consolation to me for the contempt of all mankind.”  This example served to make clear that America, even before we officially declared our independence, would be a country of laws and rights, rather than opinions and mobs, elevating a fundamental principle above personal safety and reputation.  How many would have done the same?

Hamilton, for his part, was the prototypical American upstart before there were American upstarts.   A bastard and an orphan born in the West Indies, he received the attention of a wealthy merchant and earned a scholarship at King’s College, then somehow managed to insert himself in every major event from the declaration to the drafting of the Constitution to the forming of the first government.  He started his career as a pamphleteer advocating for the revolution, fought in the war as an aide-de-camp to Washington himself, penning many of his letters during that time, served as a delegate to Congress, served as delegate to the Constitutional Convention, helped ratify the Constitution by writing the Federalist Papers, then became the first Treasury Secretary under Washington, and ultimately set up the country’s first unified monetary system.  Interestingly, Hamilton wasn’t Washington’s first choice.  He originally picked Robert Morris, who was known as the “financier of the American Revolution” for all the money he raised.  When Morris demurred, he recommended Hamilton, even though he was a lawyer by trade and not in the budding financial industry, claiming there was “no better man in finance,” and the rest is history as they say.  Tragically, Hamilton was cut down in a duel in 1804 and we will never know what else he might have achieved had he lived a full life, though even that serves as a cautionary tale, but at the risk of repeating myself, how many could have done the same?

As we celebrate America’s 250th birthday, we should be sure to both look to the future with confidence, which will have to serve as the topic for another post, and carefully consider the past, the unique blend of principles and personalities that changed the world when nothing and no one else could.  The Founders mentioned here and many more, the people they lead, the decisions they made and the principles they espoused, the unique, timeless combination between them that has never been recreated before or since, those rare moments in history when personal choices resulted in fundamental change, progress for themselves and the entire human race. If that’s not something to celebrate, I don’t know what is.  If that’s not something to be proud of, I don’t know what else is.  If that’s not a reason to be a patriot – even if you come to it late as I did – I don’t know what else is.