Who Will Be Sovereign?

“Notwithstanding the boasted virtue of America, it is more probable that we shall exhibit the last melancholy proof, that mankind are not competent to their own Government without the means of coercion in the Sovereign.”
George Washington – In a Letter to John Jay

I have previously confessed that I enrolled in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) from Yale a couple of years ago. The subject matter was the American Revolution. That was a lot of work, but I so enjoyed that experience that I found another course entitled “America’s Founding Fathers” taught by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo from Gettysburg College. Guelzo’s accomplishments are impressive, contributing to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, the National Review, and other notable publications in addition to writing several acclaimed historical books. The approach that Guelzo uses in the course is to talk about this period through the eyes of several “founding fathers”. In the introduction he talks about his criteria for inclusion in this exclusive list of people from that period in our history. His list includes lots of people you will readily remember like Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson but also some that are not as familiar like Thomas Mifflin and William Findley.

One would think that our first president would make the list. But he did not. Oh, George Washington is on his list but not our first President. George Washington was our first president under our present constitution. Our first “President” under the Articles of Confederation was a guy by the name of John Hanson. He took over right after the Revolutionary War. He served in the Congress from Maryland and he was apparently so popular that he was unanimously elected by his colleagues. Actually, there were six “Presidents” before Washington, most of whom you probably haven’t heard of. A notable exception to that statement was that John Hancock served a one-year term.

I have read a lot about Washington. So much has been written. But it is concluded by all that Washington was in many ways a modest man and certainly not a “power-grabber” as many in that time were, and I guess as many are today. In fact, in 1783 Washington appeared before Congress and President Hanson and personally submitted his resignation as the leader of American armed forces. He was so universally revered that he probably could have just appointed himself king and Americans would have been happy. But his intent was to quietly return to his beloved Virginia and live out his life in peace and happiness there. So, what happened to reengage him and what in the world would motivate the Father of our Country to issue the pessimistic pronouncement cited above?

Well, it seems after the euphoria of the British surrender at Yorktown and the establishment of the Articles of Confederation, things were going a little sideways. Washington was not the only one who was alarmed. When Benjamin Franklin came home from a stint representing the country to the French monarchy, he was shocked at what had been taking place with the state assemblies and particularly the assembly of his own state, Pennsylvania. The Articles left nearly all meaningful power with the states and they were exercising it in ways that no one would have foreseen. More on that later, but Franklin was also dismayed at American newspapers (a couple of which he had created). He said they were “affronting, calumniating, and defaming one another”. I didn’t know exactly what that second thing was, but I was sure it wasn’t good. I had to look it up. It means that they were making false and derogatory comments about each other. Franklin was particularly alarmed that Pennsylvania had basically pitched his old buddy Robert Morris out of the Assembly, almost accusing him of not being a patriot. This was pretty ironic since Morris had personally provided over one million pounds of his own money to the tottering government. Morris had also been invaluable in his assistance to Franklin in getting foreign loans for our fledgling country. Morris was regarded by most as being our first government finance expert and had many common-sense ideas for how American commerce and banking should be handled. Those ideas were summarily rejected.

How bad was it?

• With our independence from Great Britain and their economic restraints, Americans went on a binge of consumption and speculation.
• With a lack of hard currency Americans found themselves unable to repay the loans that they had racked up with English banks. These defaults in turn brought down no less than five of Great Britain’s largest banks. It didn’t take too long for the remaining ones to turn off the credit to the “colonists”.
• American merchants were in turn unable to buy any goods to sell and closed their doors.
• With the collapse of credit, land values fell, and mortgages went into default.
• With no ability to tax, the national government was unable to pay off its sizable war debt, which in turn soured other European government from extending further credit.
• The assemblymen from no less than seven states knew the way out of the problem – they would just print up some money and pass a law that it was “legal tender” and had to be honored for the repayment of debt – in their state. They also enacted laws that prevented lenders and sellers from collecting debts in any other way. This of course led to wild inflation and the complete collapse of capital borrowing.
• The Brits, understandably upset that the colonists were defaulting on their debts, threatened to NOT honor the peace treaty of 1783 and they specifically began to take steps to retake the forts in the West.
• American soldiers who had not been paid were so angry that a Pennsylvania regiment marched to Philadelphia and surrounded the statehouse where Congress was meeting and threatened the congressmen for their pay. (Congress quickly adjourned and wisely determined to next meet – in Princeton, New Jersey a perhaps safer environment.)
• But what worried Franklin and Washington most was described in a Boston newspaper. America now had developed a “private, selfish, and basely avaricious spirit …. in the room of public virtue”.

Well, we all know that cooler heads prevailed, a new constitution was adopted giving the federal government more power, Washington reluctantly agreed to become our “second-first-president” and we began to work our way out of the predicament. But Washington’s words seem hauntingly prescient to me in 2021-America. I wonder sometimes if we really CAN govern ourselves. In America we say that the PEOPLE are sovereign. But that is not the “Sovereign” that Washington was thinking about. He was thinking about a singular strongman, in his case King George. In other words, he questioned whether we, acting on our own, have the common sense and the common decency to take care of each other and to work for the common good. What do these words mean in today’s America? That is the real issue in our country today. It is a bit presumptuous for anyone to say they really know what acting in the common good is. But I think I know a few things that are NOT in the common good:

• Attacking the seat of our federal representative government – Congress – while our duly elected representatives are carrying out a duty prescribed for them in our Constitution;
• Using social media, to propagate the most outlandish and unsubstantiated rumors, misleading and inciting people to act against their own interest and the interests of others;
• Unendingly refusing to accept an election result that by all unbiased sources was determined to be the most fairly conducted in our history;
• Calumniating each other through biased and slanted usage of all the forms of media under the guise of “reporting the news” – think FOX News, the Huffington Post, CNBC, OAN etc.;
• Establishing economic systems, through taxation and other provisions, that provide for unheard of disparities between the haves and the have-nots;
• EXPECTING and DEMANDING that government be the answer to all problems of every individual, even when those problems are self-inflicted;
• Denying citizens of REAL equal protection under the law because of their race;
• Justifying police racial profiling and cultures of violence towards minorities in our police departments;
• Using wrongs by others (including our police) to justify lawlessness and destruction of public and private property;
• Making it more difficult for poor and minority group Americans to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote;
• Taking the greatest threat to public health that we have experienced in one hundred years and making it a matter of political debate.

There are others but the big question is why do we do these things? Can we really govern ourselves? We are certainly not realistically threatened by any foreign power. The threat is US. My nephew, a young man with wisdom beyond his years, forwarded a summary of a presentation that he recently heard detailing how much division and animosity there is in our country today. It was presented by Doug Sosnik, a senior policy advisor for the multi-national Brunswick company. I can’t recite all the information in this thought-provoking piece but if you get a chance, I recommend that you review it. I can forward a link if any of you are interested. He makes the point that our country is nearing a real inflection point. Things are dramatically changing and are going to be changing more over the coming years, and maybe not for the better. I was particularly struck by the main point of his summary of politics in the country.

The unifying force in American politics today is the opposition to the other political party. Democrats are out to trample and demonize former President Trump and his followers and Republicans aspire to “own the Libs”. Public policy takes a back seat to these more visceral goals – party positions can actually be reversed depending on what the other party favors. And internally among party activists, the competition is for which candidate will more aggressively, even outrageously, pursue this goal. Incumbent Republicans are more likely to lose a primary from the right – and incumbent Democrats are more likely to lose a primary from the left – than to be defeated in a general election in most districts. Compromise is not a dirty word; it isn’t a word at all.

I used to think that it was only a matter of time before democracy and self-governance would be the system for all countries. But look around – Hong Kong, Russia, North Korea, Myanmar, India, Brazil, Syria – we are going in the opposite direction towards authoritarian rule, coercion of a Sovereign. America is the world’s last beacon of hope for a system that provides for self-governance and liberty and justice for all – sovereignty of the people. But we are NOT too big to fail. In fact, I could see Franklin’s and Washington’s fears realized if we do not change the trajectory that we are on. I pray that modern day Washingtons and Franklins will step forward. But more than that, I pray that we will ALL eliminate the “private, selfish and basely avaricious spirit in the room of public virtue”. And that we will ALL eschew the politics of division, excess and hate. We did it in 1789, I pray that we can do it again.