On America’s 250th anniversary, remember the wisdom of our founders | Opinion
As we reflect on the 250th anniversary of our country’s founding, a look back at the debates and wisdom of our founders is instructive for our future success.
Our nation’s founding was categorically different from any other. America’s founders knew the struggle of an oppressive monarchy as they separated from England. Ours was to be a government for the people by the people. While there had been some smaller, unsuccessful examples, America was the first large-scale attempt and success at a democratic and constitutional Republic.
The U.S. form of government can be described with two different modifiers of a republic. A democratic republic describes how the body of governing officials is chosen. It’s not an aristocracy, not based on blood relations and not hand-picked by a king or monarch; they are chosen by the citizens of their respective districts.
The other modifier is a constitutional republic, which sets limits on the government’s power. It’s an acknowledgement that while public officials are elected by the people, they also can betray the will of the people and attempt to be tyrannical or authoritarian. The Constitution is a wonderful guardrail that clearly lays out the restrictions that government officials cannot encroach.
Our form of government pushes back against top-down rule, but it also pushes back against pure populism. Ancient Athens tried a direct democracy in the 6th century BC, and it showed the many shortcomings of pure populism or pure democracy. While it didn’t fail overnight, Ancient Athens displayed three red flags of populism.
The first was that the large body of citizen-lawmakers could be easily influenced by persuasive speakers who sway the mass opinion. This also contributed to the second red flag, which is that due to the tendency of people being easily won over, rapid swings in public opinion due to manipulative or charismatic characters can lead to incredibly inconsistent policy. This leads to the third red flag: that majority rule can at times be harsh or impulsive, as it consumes misleading rhetoric and creates a mob mentality.
The importance of the Constitution has proven vital for our republic to generally mitigate these problems. In contrast, shortly after America was founded, the French Revolution was underway in 1789. The French people originally sought to take down the reigning monarchy and transform it into a government that worked more for the people.
In 1791, they adopted a constitution that kept the office of the monarch but limited his power. Then in 1792, the entire monarchy was overthrown, and the first republic was declared. At this point, the 1791 Constitution stopped functioning, and what followed was a total disaster. The convention was ruled by emergency committees that changed precedent rapidly and operated with no constraint.
This time period is known as the Reign of Terror because of the government’s mass arrests, revolutionary courts and close to 16,000 executions of anyone against the revolution. If a functional constitution that limited government were in place at this time, it is unlikely this would have happened, and a more common-sense reform could have taken place. Even just 15 years later, the French could have learned from the newly formed America.
Though the democratic and constitutional American political system is set up for success, its future isn’t dependent on the government. It’s dependent on the citizens. The people must engage with their government, become an informed electorate, regularly vote in elections, and have the moral clarity and vision to see and address attempts at tyranny and corruption.
The calling of the American citizen is incredibly high. As the then-Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, said in 1967, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The liberty that we enjoy today must be constantly defended and pursued by civic engagement.
For America to have another 250 years and more of success, citizens must wrestle with the big questions of our day productively. The echoes of extreme populism that brought down Athens are commonplace nowadays, while nuanced policy discussion, marked by humility, is not. The nation needs its citizens to engage with one another constructively, no matter what side of the aisle they are on.
Americans should not take the wisdom and thoughtful deliberation of the founders for granted, and we can’t be deceived into thinking that the American experiment can continue to thrive without the participation of an informed and engaged citizenry. As astutely warned by Benjamin Franklin, our country is a republic, if we can keep it.
We can and should.
Sam Cardwell is a Policy Analyst for the Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Washington and Wyoming. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org.