The founding fathers of the United States are often considered geniuses, and they were. There is only one constitution in the world that guarantees its citizens the pursuit of happiness, never mind the right to bear arms, protection against illegal seizes and seizures, or the fact that all men are created equal (well, sort of).
Like Einstein, standing on the shoulders of giants so that he could see beyond our 20th-century understanding of the Universe, so too were our founding fathers standing on the shoulders of other experiments in democracy. If Rome and Greece were good starting points for a new government, the Kingdom of England was an example of the opposite. Governing people is difficult work. There are many forms of government and they are all some type of compromise, though most often the compromises happen on the people being governed unfortunately. Democracy however, is the form of government that leans more favorably towards the people being governed by giving them a voice. It was for this reason, that “a government for the people and by the people” had to be a democracy.
Churchill once said “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried”. Why would Churchill denigrate democracy, the very form of government chosen by the aforementioned geniuses? Democracy is tricky business. This the reason our founding fathers implemented it using a triad of three equal branches:
- Executive
- Legislative
- Judiciary
Each branch of government is supposed to be checked and balanced by the other two. Few can say that our form of democracy has not worked well for the past 230 years. Even then, however, there were concerns that a person could be elected into the executive and posses the correct talents and lack principles, that said elected executive could disrupt the government into a chaos of his own making and benefit.
When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanor—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind”
Founders Online – 1792 – https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-12-02-0184-0002
The quote above was written only 3 years after the constitution was adopted. Even within this very short period of time, the founding fathers could see the potential they described. My fear has always been the same; not that Trump will continue to stoke the fires that polarize us, or that he will continue to break the hard-earned trust of our allies by betraying them, or that he’ll continue to make a fool of himself. No, my fear has always been that he’ll never leave office.
Unlike any of his predecessors, there have only been 44, he has no scruples, or shame. If any of them got into the office for the betterment of the country, or even to make money, he got into office by accident. This is not a denigration of his election, but a fact he’s acknowledged. Trump never expected to be elected. He got into the race as a way promote his TV show, but as the spotlight shined on him, it also did so on his personal finances. Trump is a person that will do anything to maintain what he considers “his image”, even if that image is that of a cartoon to most other people.
This is what makes me afraid. That he will do anything to stay in office, just as our founding fathers feared.
