Being a firm believer, by virtue of personal experience, in original sin doesn’t make me, I don’t believe, a conspiracy theorist, but, rather, a sober realist, right smack-dab in the good old pragmatic and skeptical keeping of our founders, especially when it comes to human nature and especially when it comes to the ego, and the wielding around of oxymoronic “know-it-all” power like silly putty.
Just like the theme in the “Lord of the Rings,” the holding of such power presents a major temptation for anyone, hobbit, person or nation. Just recall and consider old Lord Acton’s observation, about how power tends to corrupt.
The genius of our founders was to have the realism and humor to realize their fallibility to their bones; yet, in the gusto of it all, give it the good old attempt “to beat that unbeatable foe” — and try to outsmart human nature’s wayward tendencies by keeping those tendencies in check with a whole new political system that operated on governmental internal checks and balances and openness, and on civil opportunity and the primacy of the rule of law instead of on totalitarian authority.
Anyway, the rant that I’ve been recently singled out on as spieling, hasn’t been my rant, at all, but the background radiation of the voices and concerns of our founders and leaders who’ve distinguished themselves in our history, whom I’ve been trying my very best to amplify.
Listen, thus, closely as old John Adams considers the problematical nature of democracy itself: “Remember, he said, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhaust, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”
That may very well be so. It’s the responsibility and struggle of each generation not to be the generation that’ll fizzle out on continuing the great American adventure. And certainly on the heels of the greatest generation, I don’t want it to be my generation to go down as Cassius and Brutus, stabbing the American enterprise in the back out of a misguided sense of security and entitlement.
Remember, before our necks and right to a Humvee, the president, first and foremost, is sworn to uphold and defend our Constitution.
To further this magnificent political endeavor, as we saw with the election in Palestine or in Lebanon, which brought Hamas to power and Hezbollah to obtaining significant political power, has little or nothing to do with the majority will, but everything to do with the collective “will to life” of our Republic, with our — still — believing in our founders’ inspiration and our willingness to stand up for it.
It is this generation, now, that is backbone for carrying on the American idea.
Anyway, talking to a friend recently about our checks and balance system, he, in his usual perspicuous manner, told me, “no matter how good a mouse trap you build sooner or latter there’s going to be a rat out there who figures out how to steal the cheese without getting caught.”
I found it an apt metaphor, especially to watch this administration purposely, through an unwarranted war, use it as pretext to snatch more and more power for itself.
Alexander Hamilton mused over this very same scenario in Federalist Papers 8, and wasn’t it Thomas Jefferson who once warned “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”?
To be sure, we need to stand strong against terrorism, but, as vigilantly or more, we need to stand strong against our own worst tendencies, lest we be seduced by the siren of nationalism into the culturally destructive realm of never ending war.
For just as Adam and Eve lost Paradise we, ourselves, if not careful, could lose our Republic.
Contrary to the delusions of some we’re not omnipotent much less immortal.
We’d, thus, best listen closely, to those ever haunting words of long dead and gone Andrew Jackson in his farewell address: “It is from within among yourselves, from cupidity, from corruption, from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power that factions will be formed and liberty endangered. It is against such designs what ever disguise the actors assume, that you have especially to guard against.”
As patriots, the backbone for carrying on the American idea, let’s honor the old ghost and buck up to the occasion.
Remember, our founders were willing to risk everything, life and fortune, for posterity.
Tim O’Leary is a longtime Homer resident.
We encourage you to add your comments. To prevent spam, comments with links are manually approved during the normal business day. Please be respectful of others with your comments, bear in mind anyone in the community may be reading your comments.
