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Angry Gods and Better Angels [1]

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Date: 2023-08-30

Angry Gods and Better Angels

I read Jack Smith’s indictment a few days ago, and although I have long kept myself from writing anything apropos all thing's orange… some thoughts refuse to stay silent.

In an earlier life I spent a few decades teaching and writing about American History and early each year I emphasized a specific date. March 4th, 1801. On that date Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as President. Big whup, you say – yes, really big.

Any understanding of our history must be based on the dialectic that formed us, The Great Awakening and The Enlightenment. The pendulum of our common narrative swings between us being sinners in the hands of an angry god or listening to the better angels of our nature. Whatever form our political party structure has taken over the years, one side has always been dominated by an evangelical form of Christianity while the other embodies a secular humanism. The lines are neither absolute nor well defined; but they are obvious, and they are us.

I suggested to years of students as we worked through the American Revolution, that winning a revolution is the easy part – but establishing a workable government that embodies those revolutionary principles; that’s the tough part.

After a surprise victory over the superpower of the day the founding fathers faced that exact challenge. And after a failed flirtation with a confederation; the leaders of the several states met in Philadelphia to figure something out. They met in secret, they were mostly rich, and they were definitely, all white men.

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were there too. OK, not actually there, they were off in Britain and France pretending to be a State department that didn’t exist yet. But they were there. Jefferson couldn’t have embodied the Enlightenment more if he walked in with a copy of Voltaire and a baguette. Adams was such a pragmatic yankee that most of the attendees hated him. But what they both understood was that whatever they came up with had to work. It had to represent widely divergent views on pretty much everything, it had to form a Union out of people that disagreed and would allow them to keep disagreeing for… well, forever.

And it seemed to work, at least as long as Washington was in charge, and everyone remained politely civil. Inevitably, someone would have to become the second President. Hopefully it would be someone everyone liked. It wasn’t, it was Adams, and nobody liked him anymore than they used to.

By this point Jefferson had taken his ball and gone home. He felt that the Federalists had taken the young republic in the wrong direction. He had long arguments about this with Adams, but everyone had long arguments with Adams.

Sparing you from a lengthy treatise on the Alien & Sedition Acts and some snappy prose about absolute power corrupting… Adams was about to become our first one-term President. The election of 1800 was ugly, and the British press was sure that the American experiment was reaching its end. Adams and the Federalists were the only party that had ever been in power – every non-elective office holder had been appointed by a Federalist, every General in the army, every secretary in the cabinet. Would men in power simply relinquish that power because people had voted? They never had before, I checked.

Not just relinquish power that you liked; your picture on the money, great parking, a navy, getting to keep your slaves, etc. But the power to keep the country on the course that you absolutely believe is the right one while being as absolutely convinced that the course the other guy wants to take will destroy everything.

Adams and Jefferson had never particularly agreed back in the early days, but they sensed character in each other, practicality, and a sincere belief in the common good and common progress (at least if you’re a white male that owns land). By the Election of 1800, those bonds of mutual mission had shattered; Jefferson saw in Adams and his version of the Republic a betrayal of everything he believed. And Adams saw Jefferson as a smarty pants pain in the ass.

But, people voted. Actual people. Adams lost. The Constitution says hand over the power – but, really, nobody ever had.

March 4, 1801

Adams sincerely believed Jefferson and his policies would ruin the country. Powerful men assumed Adams would do what was best for the country. Adams did what was best for the country. On March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as the President.

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