Sketches of The American Founders: Adams

Born in 1735, John Adams was a Harvard graduate who defended the accused British soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial.  He later became a member of the Federalist Party. He was a capable leader and a one-term president; today’s presidents would be wise to emulate him.

The wealth of his thought is beyond the scope of any short piece, but what follows is some of the best. Adams knew that central to the American Enlightenment was the abandonment of fear: “Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.”

He defined the relationship between the American government and its people: “Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.”

He wasn’t perfect: “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever”, he said. This is a variation on Voltaire, and numerous exceptions apply. Americans lost the legal right to drink when the Eighteenth Amendment was passed, but by consuming enough illegal booze and continuing to fight, they eventually won back their right to drink. Indeed, that’s all Americans seem to do these days!

Nothing could be more pertinent to today’s Equal Protection debate than Adams’ witty insights on equality: “That all men are born to equal rights is true… But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French revolution.”

Jefferson and Adams both died on July 4, 1826; Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson survives.”

They live in spirit.