Unaddressed issue
Bruce Fein
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The current political campaigns are blind to what the Founding Fathers intended elections to be about. Not the economy, not the projection of a global military footprint, but elections ought to deal with securing freedom, self-government and independence at home with a robust and transparent system of checks and balances. The candidates should be debating such issues as whether the president is empowered to initiate warfare, whether Congress may delegate to the president its authority to move the nation from a state of peace to a state of war, or whether international terrorists are criminals or warriors necessitating permanent war powers over every square inch of the planet to adorn the White House.
John Quincy Adams, then-secretary of state, elaborated in a July 4, 1821 address: "[The United States] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."
The Founding Fathers understood that the nation was conceived to promote liberty at home, to defend its sovereignty against foreign aggressors, and to honor government by the consent of the governed. No citizen would be a vassal. All would be exhorted to scrutinize and criticize public officials. A collective vigilance against government abuses or lawlessness would protect the Republic from imitating the decline and fall of Rome. Self-government would give lofty meaning and fulfillment to life between ashes to ashes and dust to dust. The people would be masters of their political fate, captains of their political souls. Everything else, the Founding Fathers sermonized, would be ornamental.
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Wednesday, September 3, 2008
The current political campaigns are blind to what the Founding Fathers intended elections to be about. Not the economy, not the projection of a global military footprint, but elections ought to deal with securing freedom, self-government and independence at home with a robust and transparent system of checks and balances. The candidates should be debating such issues as whether the president is empowered to initiate warfare, whether Congress may delegate to the president its authority to move the nation from a state of peace to a state of war, or whether international terrorists are criminals or warriors necessitating permanent war powers over every square inch of the planet to adorn the White House.
John Quincy Adams, then-secretary of state, elaborated in a July 4, 1821 address: "[The United States] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of mind. She has a spear and a shield; but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."
The Founding Fathers understood that the nation was conceived to promote liberty at home, to defend its sovereignty against foreign aggressors, and to honor government by the consent of the governed. No citizen would be a vassal. All would be exhorted to scrutinize and criticize public officials. A collective vigilance against government abuses or lawlessness would protect the Republic from imitating the decline and fall of Rome. Self-government would give lofty meaning and fulfillment to life between ashes to ashes and dust to dust. The people would be masters of their political fate, captains of their political souls. Everything else, the Founding Fathers sermonized, would be ornamental.
--MORE--