I grew up honoring the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt as men who cared about me, the little guy.

The Founding Fathers proposed the radical idea of people governing themselves. But they went much further than Socrates, the gadfly, who just stung the rump of power with needles of truth. These extraordinary men became burning revolutionaries who put their lives on the line to establish a new nation based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Most of the Founders enjoyed great wealth and might well have lived out their lives in comfy style regardless of the abuses of an English king. While certainly less than perfect themselves, they chose the road of courage because they cared about their fellow citizens more than they cared about their own privilege and safety.

The great Lincoln, a common man himself in many ways, truly believed in government “by the people and for the people.” He anguished over the Civil War, especially the soldiers who suffered and died. He spent much of his presidency living near a military hospital in Washington D.C. where daily he tried to comfort wounded men and express his appreciation for their sacrifice.

The wealthy Theodore Roosevelt championed the cause of the common man in bone-to-bone confrontations with big business. The even wealthier Franklin Delano Roosevelt did the same, although it would be years before he became as revered as his cousin.

I grew up as a child of the “Greatest Generation,” the hard working men and women who pulled together and endured the twin hardships of the Great Depression and World War II. So it seemed only natural to honor great Americans who stood up for the common man. Sure, we knew America made mistakes. In a vague way, we understood our country had perpetrated racial genocide on Native Americans, enslaved Blacks, and twice dropped terrible bombs on innocent civilians. But we still convinced ourselves “the system worked.”

But now, the United States Congress has relegated the great ideals of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Lincoln, and the Roosevelts to the bone yard along with our Constitution. The framers excluded property qualifications for federal office to avoid any connection to “veneration of wealth,” but this veneration now dominates Congress. 

The ideals of liberty, individual freedom, and concern for common men mean nothing. Congress has betrayed the Founders just as surely as did Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War.  The hard work and sacrifices of millions of Americans who struggled to expand the promises of 1776 and 1787 have been in vain.. Only the favored few count.

Consistently, however, courageous individuals and organizations try to penetrate the walls with the fire of truth. The resident powers always reject the truth tellers, sometimes with a flick of a switch and sometimes with overwhelming power.

Jack London, in his great political novel The Iron Heel, described a confrontation between power and truth. The novel’s hero, Ernest Everhard, invited to speak to a group of wealthy industrialists, blistered his squirming audience about their abuses, especially child labor.

“You have failed in your management. You have made a shambles of civilization. You have been blind and greedy. You have risen up, shamelessly, in our legislative halls and declared profits were impossible without the toil and burden of children and babes.”

Everhard then threatened the group with a worldwide worker’s revolution All the industrialists become extremely nervous except Mr. Wickson, who rose, cool and dispassionate, to answer Everhard’s threat.

“There stands the bear,” Wickson said, pointing at Everhard, “and your buzzing has only tickled his ears. That bear reached out his paws tonight to crush us. He said that it is their intention to take away from us our governments, our palaces, and all our purpled ease.”

Turning suddenly on Everhard, Wickson continued, “This, then, is our answer. We have no words to waste on you. When you reach out your vaunted strong hands, we will show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrapnel and in the whine of machine guns will our answer be couched.

“We will grind you revolutionaries under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces. The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall remain.”

This scenario plays out thousands of times every year behind the secretive walls of Congress. Certainly, it varies by situation, and in its shadings, but it remains essentially the same crush of the iron heel.

Even as these scenarios continue, our politicians proclaim America’s greatness. But could they explain to John Adams how a country can be considered great when millions of its citizens go hungry. Could they explain how America can be called great when more than forty million people have no health insurance. Maybe they could impress Adams with the greatness of a country sending its young men and women to die in a foreign country to satisfy an addiction for oil.

They might also try to explain to Adams how a country can speak of greatness when it calls citizens unpatriotic for questioning the government. In response, Adams most certainly would refer to the Declaration of Independence –

“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Where have you gone John Adams? We need you now. But perhaps better for you to stay away. Better to remain oblivious to what your America has become. Better to avoid a broken heart.