I've been ruined by the musical Hamilton. It's songs still echo at the slightest provocation. For example, I'm reading a book, Hamilton, Adams, Jefferson: The Politics of Enlightenment and the American Founding by Darren Stadoff and every time I open it to the chapters about John Adams, I hear King George scoff, "Adams? They'll eat him alive!" Well, as it happens, the song and characterizations are catchy, but the musical's version of history is a little off. That's okay, though. It's excused. It's still brilliant. And so, it turns out, was John Adams.
The Enlightenment, you will recall, heralded the age of reason we take so for granted now - the idea that human reasoning ability holds the key to any knowledge worth having, that science trumps faith, and that rationalism is capable of paving the way to as close to utopia that mankind can achieve - and came by the pens of thinkers like Rousseau, Voltaire, and Locke. And all of this at exactly the time this country was being born. So of course, as educated men, the founding fathers of this country were influenced by it, but each had their own wrinkle and I found Adams' particularly compelling.
Adams was not a successful President. He followed Washington and was voted out after one term in favor of Thomas Jefferson, but he had some compelling ideas that made me think of our country, especially as it lines up today, angry battle lines ready to fire at one another at the slightest provocation.
Adams' take on mankind contemplated the degree to which the equality of mankind was possible. He agreed that people have the potential, even the mandate, to reason, but as they work toward it, are often ruled by pure passion. When we say equality, we don't often mean it, envisioning a mass of people more or less equal to one another, but presided over by, hopefully, ourselves, rising just above the masses or lacking that, presided over by someone more wealthy, more motivated, or more gifted. Equality is fine, in other words, but we are more comfortable when there is someone in power more equal than others.
Whoa! Whoa!
Don't shoot the messenger!
Think about it a minute. How do you see the world? How does anyone? It's not possible to see the world through any eyes other than our own. We are always the central character in the story, in any world we experience. It can't be any other way. I can't see the world through your eyes or you through mine. It's not possible. We have a deep love for ourselves that automatically makes us self-centered and selfish. That's why our emotions are geared toward individual experience and, inevitably, individual welfare. It is our only reference point.
That doesn't mean we're corrupt. It only means we care about ourselves more than we care about anyone else. We tend to admire people whose desire for the improvement of others brings them personal notoriety - Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Eleanor Roosevelt. Their passion for compassion may render them more pure of heart, but even they cannot live the lives they try to improve. They are merely living their own.
But let's look at most folks. We say we want equality. We want an egalitarian society, where everyone has their say and the will of the people is enacted without interference from an elite nobility.
But we don't.
We don't. Think about it. Communism doesn't work. The French Republic drove them to chaos. These happen because the will of an amorphous, uneducated, or uninterested people can't be trusted either. Like it or not, we look at power as a zero-sum game. If one person has more, that automatically means someone else has less. And we want to be on the side of the more. We tend to ignore that with power comes work and responsibility. Many of us don't want that, either. Look at how many people, even in an election as seemingly important as the last, didn't bother to vote at all. More than 35%. What some people want is a comfortable life determined by someone else, someone smarter, richer, or more advantageously placed. They want a kind of equality but at the same time want to be ruled.
Actually, our government is designed to accomodate both camps. The Senate represents the elite, the few. The House of Representatives represents the many, the commonplace folk. The Presidency, designed to maintain a balance, actually operates on one side or the other to accomplish the agenda of the party in power, but the power of the Presidency lasts only as long as the President remains in office.
Adams understood that a pure democracy will always be short-lived and the source of its own undoing. We do not have a pure democracy, nor do we really want one.
A modern Roberspierre would inevitably rise up and those looking for a strong leader would support him. America, after all, has its own aristocracy. Every society does. Actors, sports stars, Musk and Jobs and Gates and Trump. They are our modern aristocracy and we expect them, not us, to get things done.
John Adams knew this and it wasn't more welcome news then than it is now. Yes, they ate him alive for it, but he thought the truth worth the torture. I would probably not stand as he did in front of a firing squad for it, but as difficult as it is, I welcome the divided government he believed to be essential and look to it as the foundation of the struggle that paves the way forward.
Photo: Farside, Redbubble
