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Perhaps John Adams was Mistaken
Photo ID: 1439792717, From Grossinger, via Shutterstock
John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” I think Mr. Adams may have been at least partially mistaken about this. I view Mr. Adams as one of the great minds of his era, so I hesitate to disagree with him on something about which he gave a great deal of thought. But hear me out, and see if you think that I might have a point.
Over the last few decades, I’ve watched the left move further and further left. The “do whatever feels good” hippies of the 1970s went through an anti-establishment phase, but they eventually grew up and got jobs and families and minivans. But today’s leftists are anti-American radicals who seek to “fundamentally transform” America via the complete destruction of the ideas, traditions, and ethics that made America the greatest country the world has ever seen.
As the radical left has gone from being a fringe movement to being one of our two political parties, America has become home to two groups of people, both of whom absolutely refuse to live by the policies and ideas of the other. So elections are no longer opportunities to sort out disagreements about highway funding, Post Office subsidies, or other mundane matters. Now, every election is a final battle to save democracy from Republicans, or to save the planet from capitalists, or save the children from some other cataclysmic event. I’m not sure that democracy works in this environment.
From Wikimedia Commons
Only if we essentially agree on basic principles are we able to work out our differences on lesser matters via debates, elections, and free speech. If you openly hate your political adversaries and view them as fundamentally evil, then why would you negotiate with such scum? The only solution, in that circumstance, is complete destruction of your adversary, through any means necessary.
The tactics of the left, from the violence of Black Lives Matter, to the partisan attacks of the Justice system under Biden, to election fraud, to importing a new Democrat voting base via open borders, and so on – those tactics may seem distasteful to Americans who value our Constitution as John Adams did. But to a modern Democrat, those tactics are perfectly reasonable. What would you not do, in the battle against pure evil?
Which has led me to wonder whether a Constitutional republic can work in modern America. How could it possibly work, if half the population views that Constitution as somewhere between illegitimate and evil?
Photo ID: 1733332373. From Brett Welcher, via Shutterstock
My version of Mr. Adams’ quote might read something like, “Our Constitution was made only for a group of people who pretty much agree on most things. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
I like his quote better. But I think my version may be more applicable to modern America.
Heaven help us.
Published in General
I think Adams has it exactly right. We live in a country divided between those led by people who believe human beings have souls and there is a Supreme Being and those on the Left led by people who do not believe there is a Supreme Being or objective morality. Our Constitution works for those who believe in God and fails for those who are non-believers in God and morality.
Have you not observed that our Leftist leaders don’t reference the Constitution except under duress or when it just happens to conveniently support their current cause?
I’m a one-trick-pony on this but when the Left’s raison d’etre is abortion, one can’t work out differences; there is no “common ground”. They absolutely disavow the belief that one of our unalienable rights is the right to life.
Well, this is very simplistic of me, but Mr. Adams would see that half of the citizenry as amoral and non-religious and would therefor agree that it can’t work with people like that. Mr. Adams is not mistaken, it is just that a great number of the citizenry have revolted against reason – they’ve lost their minds.
Amen.
The left/progressives can’t or won’t distinguish between want and a need. After all, if you want if badly enough, it becomes a need because if you don’t get it, your mental health will be impaired. A “need” is only a half-step away from being a positive right for which successful people are obligated to pay through confiscatory taxes.
Remember, if things truly can’t go on this way, they won’t.
But of course, just because something can’t go on forever doesn’t mean it can’t go on for decades, or even centuries.
Inflation is not in the Constitution. There is no equal benefit from it. They don’t really equalize it for it. Then people whine about the debt to GDP. Now, literally, the fractional reserve banking system is falling apart.
Inflation is stealing. We may need to do this, but they don’t make the whole system work. Now it’s going to fall apart. Do you think people are going to vote Republican or Democrat after that?
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
The Ludwig von Mises Institute Is Right About Everything™
Better Living Through Asset Bubbles™
The Government Is Running Out Of Money™
Without this, it’s OK to kill people and steal from them. You believe that you won’t go to hell if you kill people and steal from them.
Having said that…
… why do so many people think that inflation is good? It’s stealing.
They force you to use government money because that’s the only way you can pay your taxes. Then it becomes the world reserve currency.
Is this advancing human flourishing? Like, are we really getting a bottom up positive effect?
Ect.
Lust is one of the seven deadly sins. I used to think it was focused on sexual gratification, but I just saw it was once defined as extravagance. That now seems to be mostly entertainment, sports and all other forms, takes a lot of peoples time and money.
Don’t know. It probably can’t – seeing the Constitution as evil implies irreligiousity and fallen morality.
Yeah, Adams got that one right.
What that makes me wonder, is, what sort of Constitution might be capable of that? The “any other” part.
“Our Democracy” is the one they want to keep and that is actually the totalitarian “police state” we are now experiencing. But never refer to it as a Constitutional government since they don’t want that part. That’s why they are out to revise the SCOTUS.
I could come up with a list of a hundred things I think our federal government is doing wrong, but we are not experiencing a totalitarian police state.
Yeah, you are right. We are experiencing an environment that promotes lawlessness and those who attempt to instill some decent moral behavior are jailed, fined, fired, or kicked out of school. I should just say that law enforcement is a mess.
I do think we see situations where the “police state” comes to mind, like when the FBI shows up with dozen or more armed men to effect an arrest on someone never known to be violent like the Roger Stone case and the man who was Trumps first campaign manager. Also the Utah man they shot dead down the street from me. There are others. Makes one wonder what happened on July 13.
The way they are hunting down the J6 people is terrible. Then they leave them in prison for months without a trial.
You can’t afford gigantic lawyer bills, you have limited options in life.
There have always been injustices and as long as we are sharing this country with human beings, there always will be. But this is not North Korea. It is not Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. It is watering down what true totalitarianism is to use the term to describe the U.S.
To quote the OP:
Democrats and Republicans used to agree
that the rights of free speech, assembly, religion, self defense are not granted by any government;
that violent criminals needed to be removed from the general population;
that immigration was by invitation only;
assimilation and respect for US law were required for naturalization;
there are boys and girls and inability to define either disqualifies you for public office;
discussion of gender and sexuality is not for young children;
strong military can deter bad actors internationally;
and that the constitution is not a suicide pact.
If both parties agree on this stuff, you can live comfortably with either party in charge. When you look at the current state of the party disagreements, it’s pretty easy to see which team changed.
This is not an exclusively American problem though. Worldwide, there are generations of people who have been “educated” by so-called university professors to believe that Western thought and capitalism are reprehensible and irredeemable. Therefore, everything that rational people hold as self-evident – such as the biological differences between the sexes – must be destroyed. And this sort of nihilistic worldview is pumped at society 24/7 by a cooperative media. We saw it again last night at the opening ceremony of the Olympics.
To your point, I fear that we may have reached a stage that we do not deserve democracy because we as a people have gotten too lazy and complacent to appreciate what we have. I do not see any of our leaders who are capable of the eloquence we see in the writings of Adams, or, as a further example, any of the Federalist Papers. Many of our young people, trained in the currently prevalent nihilistic philosophy, have a “Rules for Radicals” mentality, under which ridicule, not rational discourse, is the main technique. As part of that, we have the ongoing paeans to socialism, which is constantly being redefined to make stupid people accept it. I mean, really, ten minutes of critical thought would put an end to that love affair.
For an educated society, we seem to be pretty dumb.
There’s a monster assumption expressed in the premise here.
Fair take!
Scott, I’m fairly moderate on abortion, but the Democrats / lefties don’t treat abortion as an unfortunate medical procedure, like having your spleen or some of your fingers removed, or even as just an unpleasant part of life. It’s something wonderful & amazing. Could you imagine if people were as passionate about colonoscopies as some are about abortions?
It’s their sacrament.
I do not understand that kind of mindset. I’m not sure I want to do so.
They are doing their best. Co-opting the DOJ and FBI is a good start.
Putting all the national police functions under a single Department of Homeland Security was a start to the start.
Bill Clinton’s Crime Bill was an even earlier step.
I’m reminded of a Russian TV series based, with some liberties taken, on the famous Sokolov scandal that occurred shortly before the end of the Brezhnev era. There is a lot of corruption in the way the whole government works, and the investigation is taking the police and KGB too close to some people at the top, including Brezhnev’s daughter. Somebody has to take the fall, and that somebody is not exactly free of corruption, but is not enriching himself and has no possible way out of it. As the tension builds and the trap closes in on him, the injustice of the whole system becomes apparent to everyone and his wife says, “Thank God we at least don’t live in America.”
I am not sure just how the directors and producers meant that. Intentional irony? A sop to Putin, whose mentor and boss, Andropov, is portrayed quite favorably? Or the same way people in America mean it when they say, “At least we don’t live in a totalitarian police state”?
I’ve watched the whole thing at least twice, once with my wife. It’s been a while, though, and it took me a few minutes to find it again. There are 8 episodes:
https://youtu.be/1NKfGCaOjDc?si=t8wB3oyODwI8_Orw
We are schooled, but not educated.
Indoctrinated, I think.
The problem is that “moral and religious people” is indeterminate. At the time, it essentially meant some version of Protestant Christianity. Catholics were later included, but on the condition that their specific religious beliefs have no implications for public policy. Agreeing with that is what got JFK elected.
In contemporary America, historical Protestantism is a largely impotent as a social force and we Catholics aren’t much better. Into the vacuum has surged wokism/progressivism, essentially a nihilistic vision that places the self in place of God. It’s the long term consequence of refusing to define exactly what a moral and religious people is.
I wonder if our constitutional republic has run its course. Aristotle wrote that no political solution is ever permanent.
I just rewatched the first episode. The main character, informed by his wife that their daughter who still lives with them is pregnant and is not interested in marrying the guy says, “Don’t talk about sexual revolution. Thank God we’re not in America.”
I had a vague recollection that the phrase came up more than once in the series, but remembered only the one that comes up toward the end in connection with the kangaroo court where he is sentenced to death. (I hope that’s not considered a spoiler. You can read about it in the New York Times from 1982, too, though the TV series doesn’t follow the timeline of actual events exactly. And some names have been changed.)
Exactly
What we practice isn’t capitalism. The Fed is too involved in the economy and we don’t regulate finance properly. I realize nobody cares, but I’m positive it interferes heavily with everything that almost everybody wants.
http://financialrepressionauthority.com/2017/07/26/the-roundtable-insight-george-bragues-on-how-the-financial-markets-are-influenced-by-politics/
https://mises.org/mises-wire/were-living-age-capital-consumption
The Fed is always suppressing interest rates. It’s always more and more. The economy never flushes the crap out because they do that. Communism tried to run the economy with 0% interest rates. That didn’t work either.
This is excellent analysis.