America's Founders Were Heroes to the World

America’s Founders Were Heroes to the World

By Lawrence W. Reed

What Would the Founders Do? Now that’s something I’d like to see on a bumper sticker on every car in America! In these crazy times of government-mandated lockdowns and spending binges and debt explosions, a country begun by the most extraordinary generation in history ought to take a moment and ponder that question. In their day, those enlightened and courageous individuals were heroes to freedom-seeking people not just in America but all over the world.

Today’s “progressives”—a profoundly regressive lot—are quick to turn their noses up at the mere mention of “the Founders.” They magnify the imperfections of men like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Adams and denigrate their contributions.

For example: Woodrow Wilson, America’s 28th president and a progressive icon, chafed at the restrictions the Constitution placed upon the exercise of power. Separation of powers, checks and balances, and the like were obstacles to his ambitions for activist government. He once declared (https://lawliberty.org/book-review/woodrow-wilsons-new-constitution/) that “the only fruit of dividing power had been to make it irresponsible.” 

Just as the progressive San Francisco school board painted over an old mural of George Washington at a local high school (https://apnews.com/9f3037c7ec9d48a286059ac8f9975afe), those of a similar persuasion want to blot out the Founders from textbooks and public discussion.

Progressives assess America’s Founding generation not by the customs of that day or the progress for which they set the table, but by today’s progressive agenda: concentrated power wielded by an aristocracy steeped in know-it-all arrogance, stifling political correctness, self-righteous virtue-signaling, and cosmic ignorance of both human nature and economics. If that’s your perspective, you can’t help but see the likes of Jefferson as antiquated and irrelevant, as obstacles to be brushed aside. Progressives seek to restore the powers of the State that America’s Founders boldly stripped away, which makes progressivism profoundly regressive—a throwback to the 14th Century.

I see this often and vividly in the comments section of my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pg/Lawrence-Reed-202924809735438/posts/?ref=page_internal) posts. When I quote Jefferson, a progressive or two will denounce the man as if he personified evil. “He held slaves!” To which I usually respond thusly,

He was not perfect. His middle name wasn’t God. He was a product of the 18th Century and he helped mightily to put the world on a new and better path. Can you confidently say that if you had been born in 1743, you would have accomplished as much good as Jefferson, that you would have been a paragon of virtue? I’m guessing that if you live to be 100, you will not bless the cause of human liberty with even half what the man from Monticello gave us toward that end—not to mention science, law, letters, architecture, education and philosophy. So cool your jets, Beethoven.

Epidemics are not a 21st Century thing. The men and women of early America dealt many times with extensive and deadly diseases—including smallpox, cholera, measles and yellow fever. They were well aware of the bubonic plague (https://fee.org/articles/the-black-death-and-the-coronavirus-lessons-from-the-14th-century/) that came before and would visit again. While I wouldn’t pretend to know what the men and women of Washington’s day might prescribe for a coronavirus response in ours, it’s fair to say they believed statism to be no cure for anything—and in fact, to be a mortal danger itself and deadlier than any pathogen.

The Founders would be among the first to tell you they did not possess all the answers to everything. But they were confident that a free people would eventually come up with better answers than corrupt elites who worship power.

To the Bill of Rights, Madison never suggested adding such language as “weather permitting” or “if it’s convenient” or “pending executive approval” or “unless otherwise over-ridden for a variety of special purposes and good intentions.” He and the others at the Constitutional Convention knew that future tyrants would gladly drive a tank straight through such loopholes.

At the very minimum, the Founders would, to borrow from my essay A Nation’s True Test Comes After the Crisis (https://www.fee.org/articles/a-nation-s-true-test-comes-after-the-crisis/), “judge the leadership and character of those in power by how quickly they get off our backs, out of our pockets, and out of our way when the crisis has passed” and assess most harshly “those who use the situation to enshrine the state as our master.”

America’s Founders aren’t available for consultation but their words of warning and wisdom still are. Here’s a selection worth your time and consideration. You the reader can decide their value in present circumstances. Remember that those men and women endured hardships and challenges just as existentially serious as any we’ve experienced. They put much thought into what they did because at certain times, their very lives depended upon it. It’s never a useless exercise to hear them out:

The accumulation of all powers—legislative, executive and judicial—in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny – James Madison, 1787.

It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country by their conduct and example to decide the important question—whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force – Alexander Hamilton, 1787.

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety – Benjamin Franklin, 1759.

Honor, justice and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us – Thomas Jefferson, 1775.

I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature; and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, “Give, give!” The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government – Abigail Adams, 1775.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens – Thomas Jefferson, 1813.

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse – James Madison, 1829.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power – Alexander Hamilton, 1775.

The liberties of our Country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards. It is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present. Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter – Samuel Adams, 1771.

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interest, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions – Thomas Paine, 1776.

No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles – George Mason, 1776.