America’s Founding Fathers/Founding Fathers.
In framing the U.S. Constitution, America’s Founding Fathers, fundamentally entrusted our own governance to We the People. In doing so, they embraced the fragility of human failings and recognized that the American experiment was fraught with danger: greed and corruption were inevitable features of the human condition.
Writing in the Daily Wire on February 19, New York-based Writer Rikki Schlott said that from Washington to Jefferson, the Founding Fathers used the Constitution to give the American people a framework for success, while also leaving prophetic warnings that the great American experiment could go wrong. They left behind six chilling prophecies that are now coming true.
Franklin: A Salaried Bureaucracy May Breed Career Politicians
In 1787, Franklin stood before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and warned against a high salary for Congress (members).
“Sir, there are two passions which have a powerful influence on the affairs of mankind: these are ambition and avarice – the love of power and the love of money …… Place before the eyes of these men a position of honor, and at the same Time a lucrative one, and they will get it with a mountain of power.”
Franklin’s concerns were apparently not heeded. The first members of Congress were paid $6 a day, while today’s base salary for members of Congress is $174,000, more than 90 percent of American earners. This does not include additional annual allowances, which can run into millions of dollars.
Franklin also warned that a high salary would attract leaders of such quality that “it will not attract the wise and moderate, the peace-loving and well-ordered, the most trusted; but the bold and violent, those with strong passions and indefatigable selfish pursuits. These men will enter your government and become your rulers.”
Indeed, political office has been transformed from a civil service status into a lucrative career path that breeds the dreaded “career politician.” There is perhaps no better example than Biden, who was the sixth-youngest senator at age 30 and is now the nation’s oldest president at age 78. Public service has not been easy – according to Forbes, the Biden Family made $16.7 million just after leaving the Obama White House.
Jefferson Feared Politicization of the Supreme Court
In an 1821 letter to Nathaniel Macon, Jefferson expressed concern about the politicization of judicial power.
“Our government is now on a steady course to show by what road it will go to ruin, namely, first consolidation, then corruption ……. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the other two branches (of power) will be the instruments of corruption and of being corrupted.”
The record of congressional confirmation votes in the history of the Court shows the sudden politicization of the Supreme Court since Jefferson’s warning. This is a relatively new phenomenon —- Only in the 1980s, appointees were regularly confirmed unanimously, including three nominations by President Reagan.
Since then, confirmation of appointments has turned into a partisan sideshow, reflecting an abandonment of appointments based on legal merit in favor of partisan loyalty. The latest iteration was the October 2020 appointment of Amy Coney Barrett (D-NY). Not a single Democrat voted for her, and the rhetoric critical of her became so harsh that she was even called “a danger to future civilization.
Our Founding Fathers envisioned a Supreme Court that would defend the Constitution regardless of political affiliation. In 2020, with only 17 percent of Americans expressing a great deal of confidence in the Supreme Court, it is clear that the institution is failing the people it was designed to protect.
Madison: An Unarmed People and a Biased Media Breed Tyranny
In his 1830 autobiography, Madison outlined the prerequisites required for tyranny: “The oppressor can only exercise tyranny when he has a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed civilian population.”
Madison’s warning did come true in 2020, from the Biden Administration‘s blatant threats to the Second Amendment to the extreme partisanship exhibited by the traditional media. The rate of positive coverage has fluctuated greatly between recent presidents: from 5% positive coverage for Trump (Trump) to 42% positive coverage for Obama.
In fact, the media divides politicians into those who can’t do anything right and those who can’t do anything wrong. With headlines like “First Lady Jill Biden Wore a Hijab While Shopping and People Thought It Looked Good,” the pattern only seems to continue. No wonder a record one-third of Americans say they don’t trust the media at all.
Washington: Political factions will tear the country apart
In his Farewell Address on September 17, 1796, Washington left the presidency with a stark warning about a political system based on political parties: “However [political factions] may now and in the future serve the purposes of the people, they are likely in time and in the course of things to become powerful engines by which cunning, ambitious and unprincipled men will be able to subvert the power of the people, and usurp the government to rule, and subsequently destroy this engine which has given them unjust rule.”
Indeed, America’s political leadership is already fractured along partisan lines, with a widening gulf between the Democratic and Republican camps. As Washington predicted, politicians are operating for the betterment of their parties, thus losing sight of their common goal: to serve the American people.
This has never been truer than in the COVID-19 era. Consistently, party leaders have insisted on cramming controversial emergency measures into hundreds of pages of relief bills. In the process, they have deliberately blocked much-needed support for citizens in order to achieve a partisan agenda.
As a result, rhetoric has devolved into us versus them, even good versus evil. Most of us think badly of each other – 78 percent of Democrats think the Republican Party has been taken over by racists, while 81 percent of Republicans think the Democratic Party has been taken over by socialists, according to a 2020 poll.
But political parties not only make us hate politicians, they also make us think badly of each other. a 2017 poll even showed that Democrats believe that 50 percent of Republicans support white nationalism. The consequences of such partisan warfare could be catastrophic; a poll last October found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the country is on the brink of another civil war.
FDR: Don’t Put Security Before Liberty
In a reply to the governor at a Pennsylvania convention in 1755, Franklin criticized the willingness to give up liberty: “Those who are willing to give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
There is perhaps no better example of giving up freedom for security than during a pandemic. Despite evolving data and extremely low mortality rates among non-high-risk populations, the nation is nearing a one-year standstill with no end in sight.
Endless freedoms and civil liberties have been tossed aside in the interest of safety, from fines for operating offenses against small establishments like Atilis Gym in New Jersey to restrictions in California that strongly discourage the use of wind instruments at Thanksgiving dinners. The situation has become so dire that the Supreme Court has even had to defend the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion.
Fear-mongering and a rising Culture of securitism have led to compliance by a frightened populace. But this willingness to give up freedom may be based on misinformation – a survey last June found that the average American estimated the number of deaths from COVID-19 at 225 times the number of deaths actually reported.
Authorities are maximizing hysteria under the guise of security to usurp unprecedented power. And we risk losing our freedom by obeying increasingly unfounded and draconian blockade orders. It’s not just freedom; in the process, we are destroying the health of our economy and even causing irreversible harm to our children.
Adams feared that future generations would take freedom for granted
In a 1777 letter to his wife Abigail, Adams lamented that the sacrifices made by America’s founding generation might be forgotten by their descendants: “O posterity! You will never know what a price my generation paid to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make good use of it. If you don’t, I will regret in heaven that I ever did everything I could to protect it.”
Today, this sentiment is heartbreaking. Although we live in the freest country in history, a June 2020 poll found that a record low percentage of citizens are proud to be Americans. Perhaps because most Americans, who have never known (if not) what it would be like to live in freedom without Adams and the Revolutionary generation fighting for it, we cannot be fully grateful for our hard-won freedoms.
Only 18 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in American history, and only 7 percent of Americans can name the first four presidents – including Adams, of course. So, 244 years later, what is Adam’s heartbreaking response to the call of posterity? We haven’t forgotten the sacrifices he made to secure our freedom – sacrifices we didn’t even know about in the first place.
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