Minorities Have Equal Rights
Nevertheless, the American Founders had suffered enough from the tyrannical conduct of Parliament to feel highly sensitive to the rights of minorities. Thomas Jefferson referred to this in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1801, when he said:
"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression." 222
We have already treated the problems faced by minorities. It is important for us to remember that every ethnic group in the United States was once a minority. We are literally a nation of minorities. However, it is the newcomers who feel they are not yet first-class citizens.
It is the responsibility of the minorities themselves to learn the language, seek needed education, become self sustaining, and make themselves recognized as a genuine asset to the community. Meanwhile, those who are already well established can help. The United States has built a reputation of being more generous and helpful to newcomers than any other nation. It is a reputation worth preserving. Once upon a time, we were all minorities.
Twenty-First Principle: Strong local self-government is the
keystone to preserving human freedom.
Political power automatically gravitates toward the center, and the purpose of the Constitution is to prevent that from happening. The centralization of political power always destroys liberty by removing the decision-making function from the people on the local level and transferring it to the officers of the central government. This process gradually benumbs the spirit of "voluntarism" among the people, and they lose the will to solve their own problems. They also cease to be involved in community affairs. They seek the anonymity of oblivion in the seething crowds of the city and often degenerate into faceless automatons who have neither a voice nor a vote.
The Golden Key to Preserving Freedom
Jefferson Compares New England with Virginia
The Instinct for Self-Government Survives
Jefferson Emphasizes the Role of Strong Local Self-Government
Deployment of Power Between the Federal Government and the States
Federal Government to Remain Relatively Small
A Prophecy
The Golden Key to Preserving Freedom
How different from the New England town spirit, where every person had a voice and a vote. How different from the Anglo-Saxon tribal meetings, where the people were considered sovereign and every man took pride in participating. And how different from ancient Israel, where the families of the people were governed in multiples of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands, and where problems were solved on the level where those problems originated. All of those societies had strong local self-government. This is what the Founding Fathers considered the golden key to preserving freedom.
Jefferson Compares New England with Virginia
Thomas Jefferson saw the advantages of the close-knit New England town over the aristocratic rural life of Virginia. Said he:
"These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self government, and for its preservation." 223
Jefferson was anxious to have all the English colonists in America revive the customs of their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, including strong local self-government. As historian Richard Frothingham points out:
"In ancient England, local self-government is found in connection with the political and territorial divisions of tythings, hundreds, burghs, counties, and shires, in which the body of inhabitants had a voice in managing their own affairs. Hence it was the germinal idea of the Anglo-Saxon polity.
"In the course of events, the Crown deprived the body of the people of this power of local rule, and vested it in a small number of persons in each locality, who were called municipal councils, were clothed with the power of filling vacancies in their number, and were thus self-perpetuating bodies. In this way, the ancient freedom of the municipalities was undermined, and the power of the ruling classes was installed in its place. Such was the nature of the local self-government in England, not merely during the period of the planting of her American colonies (1607 to 1732), but for a century later.... It was a noble form robbed of its life-giving spirit." 224
The Instinct for Self-Government Survives
Nevertheless, Frothingham points out that these ancient institutions were not entirely forgotten by the people. He quotes the French historian and statesman Francois Guizot as saying:
"When there scarcely remained traces of popular assemblies, the remembrance of them, of the right of freemen to deliberate and transact their business together, resided in the minds of men as a primitive tradition, and a thing which might come about again." 225
Frothingham says this is exactly what happened as Englishmen pulled away from the mother country and migrated to America. He says that in the colonies, "These assemblies reappeared, and old rights were again enjoyed, when the emigrants to the soil now the United States began to frame the laws under which they were to live." 226
Jefferson Emphasizes the Role of Strong Local Self-Government
As the Founders wrote their laws, they were determined to protect the freedom of the individual and provide a vigorous climate of healthy, local self-government. Only those things which related to the interest of the entire commonwealth were to be delegated to the central government. Thomas Jefferson probably said it better than anyone when he wrote:
"The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to [perform best]. Let the national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the State governments with the civil rights, laws, police, and administration of what concerns the State generally; the counties with the local concerns of the counties, and each ward [township] direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these republics, from the great national one down through all its subordinations, until it ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate." 227
Deployment of Power Between the Federal Government and the States
James Madison, who is sometimes described as "the father of the Constitution," emphasized the necessity to reserve all possible authority in the states and the people. The Constitution delegates to the federal government only that which involves the whole people as a nation. He wrote:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former [federal powers] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State." 228
Federal Government to Remain Relatively Small
Thomas Jefferson emphasized that if the oncoming generations perpetuated the Constitutional pattern, the federal government would be small and cohesive and would serve as an inexpensive operation because of the limited problems which would be assigned to it. He wrote:
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let
the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants." 229
A Prophecy
One of the greatest American historians of the last generation was John Fiske. He caught the spirit of the Founders and studied their writings. He knew the secret to the 5,000 year leap which was then well on its way. He also saw some dangerous trends away from the Founders' basic formula of sound government. He therefore wrote a prophecy which Americans of our own day might ponder with profit:
"If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid!) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow their local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self government of the states shall have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England -- on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired." 230
Twenty-Second Principle: A free people should be governed by
law and not by the whims of men.
To be governed by the whims of men is to be subject to the ever-changing capriciousness of those in power. This is ruler's law at its worst. In such a society nothing is dependable. No rights are secure. Things established in the present are in a constant state of flux. Nothing becomes fixed and predictable for the future.
Law as a "Rule of Action"
Responsibility of Society to Establish Fixed Laws
John Adams
Aristotle
Plato Was Wrong
Law Is a Positive Good in Preserving Liberty
Law Should Be Understandable and Stable
Law as a "Rule of Action"
The American Founders and their Anglo-Saxon forebears had an entirely different point of view. They defined law as a "rule of action" which was intended to be as binding on the ruler as it was upon the people. It was designed to give society a stable frame of reference so the people could feel secure in making plans for the future. As John Locke said:
"Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it." 231
Under established law every person's rights and duties are defined. Anglo-Saxon common law provided a framework of relative security and a sense of well-being for people and things, both present and future. This is the security which is designed to provide a high degree of freedom from fear and therefore freedom to act. Such a society gives its people a sense of liberty -- liberty under law. The American Founders believed that without the protection of law there can be no liberty.
Responsibility of Society to Establish Fixed Laws
John Locke pointed out that unless a society can provide a person with a code of fixed and enforceable laws, he might as well have stayed in the jungle:
"To this end it is that men give up all their natural power to the society they enter into, and the community put the legislative power into such hands as they think fit, with this trust, that they shall be governed by declared laws, or else their peace, quiet, and property will still be at the same uncertainty as it was in the state of Nature." 232
John Adams
John Adams expressed the same tenor of thought when he said:
"No man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws. All other government than that of permanent known laws is the government of mere will and pleasure." 233
Aristotle
Human experience has taught mankind this same principle down through the ages. Here are the words of Aristotle in his Politics:
"Even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion. We may conclude then that the law is reason without passion, and it is therefore preferable to any individual." 234
Plato Was Wrong
We deduct from this that Aristotle had concluded that the teachings of his mentor, Plato, were wrong. Plato believed that in the ideal society the people should be governed "by the few" who would rule according to "scientific principles" and make on-the-spot decisions to force the people to do what is good for them. 235 Plato argued that these men must not be restricted by written laws but should govern the people in whatever manner they felt was for the best. He said:
"The best thing of all is not that the law should rule, but that a man should rule, supposing him to have wisdom and royal power." 236
Plato acknowledged that in the absence of rulers with the "scientific" wisdom to govern, a code of laws would be needed, but he insisted that this would be the "second best thing."
Law Is a Positive Good in Preserving Liberty
As we have seen, the American Founding Fathers would have agreed with Aristotle rather than Plato. Part of this was due to the fact that the Founders looked upon law differently than Plato. Instead of treating law as merely a code of negative restraints and prohibitions, they considered law to be a system of positive rules by which they could be assured of enjoying their rights and the protection of themselves, their families, and their property. In other words, law was a positive good rather than a necessary evil. This was precisely the view of John Locke when he wrote:
"The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom. For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law." 237
Law Should Be Understandable and Stable
The Founders were sensitive to the fact that the people have confidence in the law only to the extent that they can understand it and feel that it is a rule of relative permanence which will not be continually changed. James Madison emphasized both of these points when he wrote:
"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known and less fixed?" 238
It will be recalled that Thomas Jefferson resigned from Congress in 1776 to hasten back to Virginia and volunteer for the task of rewriting the state laws so that, when independence had been won, the people would have a model system of legal principles which they could understand and warmly support. The complex codes of laws and regulations in our own day could be greatly improved through a similar housecleaning.
Twenty-Third Principle: A free society cannot survive as a republic
without a broad program of general education.
The English colonists in America undertook something which no nation had ever attempted before -- the educating of the whole people. The colonists had a sense of "manifest destiny" which led them to believe that they must prepare themselves for a most unique and important role in the unfolding of modern world history. Universal education was therefore considered an indispensable ingredient in this preparation.
John Adams Describes Beginning of Public Education
Importance of Good Local School Boards
European and American Literacy Compared
De Tocqueville Comments on American Education in 1831
Excursions in the Wilderness
Education Includes Morality and Politics
Even Young Children Trained in the Constitution
Early Americans Educated to Speak with Eloquence
Cultural Influence of Extensive Bible Reading
John Adams Descri
bes Beginning of Public Education
The movement for universal education began in New England. Clear back in 1647 the legislature of Massachusetts passed a law requiring every community of 50 families or householders to set up a free public grammar school to teach the fundamentals of reading, writing, ciphering, history, geography, and Bible study. In addition, every township containing 100 families or more was required to set up a secondary school in advanced studies to prepare boys for attendance at Harvard. John Adams stated that this whole program was designed to have "knowledge diffused generally through the whole body of the people." He said:
"They made an early provision by law that every town consisting of so many families should be always furnished with a grammar school. They made it a crime for such a town to be destitute of a grammar schoolmaster for a few months, and subjected it to heavy penalty. So that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public, in a manner that I believe has been unknown to any other people, ancient or modern.
The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World Page 19