James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin. The names are familiar to all of us, even if we no longer remember (or never knew) why they are called the “founding fathers.” They are seldom quoted anymore, even by elected officials who swear oaths to uphold the Constitution they helped write.
It is valuable to recall what these extraordinary men set out to accomplish, because much of the current political debate makes sense only in light of their words and beliefs. It has been said “what we were is who we are.” So what were we in 1776?
We Were Giants Then
We were men of extraordinary vision and courage who pledged our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to a revolutionary cause few thought could succeed. Our goal was nothing less than the creation of a society where all men are equal before the law, where government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, and where men and women are free to pursue their God-given right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Declaration of Independence, written in Philadelphia in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson with the help of others, severed the 13 colonies’ ties with Great Britain. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” it declares, “that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
Eleven years later, in 1787, having won the war for independence, many of these same men gathered to write the Constitution. Its opening words promise British tyranny would not be replaced by homegrown tyrants. The Constitution’s purpose was “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
As Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, the Constitution “is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, A BILL OF RIGHTS.” The goal was a society of self-governors, where the state is bound by shackles while its citizens walk free. The Founders’ sacrifices in 1776 and for decades afterwards made possible what we now take for granted: an American civilization based on equal rights, limited government, and the protection of private property.
The Miracle of 1776
In retrospect, it was a miracle. During the entire 4,000 years of recorded human history up to 1776 the rule was tyranny, slavery, and the use of force. Rousseau was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right when he wrote, “Man is born free yet he is everywhere in chains.”
Individual freedom, democratic government, capitalism, and voluntary cooperation are the exceptions in human history, not the rule … surviving here and there for brief intervals, as Richard Pipes has shown in Property and Freedom, only to be wiped out by marauding tribes of bandits. And when those bandits settled down, they exacted tribute from their subjects, becoming “stationary bandits”–what today we call governments.
Few intellectuals in 1776 believed it was possible for a people to rule themselves, rather than be ruled by others. Certainly not large numbers of people, or for extended periods of time. Nor was it believed an economy could work without the Emperor, King, or Czar dictating what should be produced and by whom. But the Founders knew both were possible.
Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations–the first systematic treatise on how a system composed of the rule of law, markets, and private property rights could be just and the source of unprecedented prosperity–was published in 1776. The timing was no coincidence. Smith corresponded with Benjamin Franklin about developments in the New World. For the first time in recorded history, a deep thinker observed the birth of an economy where consumption and investment were guided by prices and profits, rather than by privilege and the force of arms.
Giving Up the Dream
Many of the Founding Fathers lost their lives and their fortunes in the fight for our freedoms, but they didn’t give up. Unfortunately, those who followed the Founders often have given up. They are still giving up today.
America once had a vibrant system of private schools–what Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 called the finest education system in the world. It was undermined and largely replaced in the second half of the nineteenth century by government schools designed by elites and financed by coercive taxation. Horace Mann and John Dewey gave up on liberty and embraced its opposite. By destroying private schooling they kicked the legs out from underneath a free society.
At the start of the twentieth century the Progressives gave up on free markets and limited government. They called for municipalization of services once privately provided, including everything from garbage collection, hospitals, charitable aid to the poor, and parks to municipal water systems, electricity, airports, and even traffic lights on city streets.
During the 1930s, in the depths of the Great Depression, many people gave up on freedom and limited government. The modern welfare state–with its confiscatory tax rates, massive bureaucracies, and invasive regulations–was born. The irony of it, of course, is that government caused the Great Depression and once it arrived, government kept the private sector from climbing back out for 10 painful years.
People all around us today are still giving up, calling for increased government spending, more regulations, and higher taxes. Republicans and Democrats alike get elected by promising more–never less. The ethics that once supported a culture of self-government are rarely discussed, even less often taught to the next generation.
What Would the Founders Say?
If the Founders were here today, what would they think of a federal government that spends 20 percent of the country’s GDP and runs up a $400 billion deficit in a single year? Would they be pleased that government owns and operates the schools 90 percent of our children attend, pays for 40 percent of all health care expenditures, forces the top 10 percent of income earners to pay two-thirds of federal taxes, and allows 36 million families to pay no income taxes at all?
More importantly, what would we say to them? That their experiment just didn’t work? That we tried freedom but it was just too difficult? Or would we make excuses, admitting that yes, we know government is too big and our freedoms have been compromised (again and again and again), but we are just too darn busy–with our jobs, our families, and more than 100 cable TV channels to choose from–to stand up and say “No more! This far and no farther!”
Champions Again
We dishonor the Founders’ memory by refusing to make the sacrifices necessary to preserve their legacy. Instead of presiding over the demise of the greatest accomplishment in human history, putting our cowardliness and selfishness on display at every election and every time Congress is in session, we should fight to restore the freedoms that are our birthright.
The Heartland Institute devotes its resources to engaging in debates over current questions of public policy, from school reform to environmental regulation to health care finance. But our perspective is firmly rooted in what the Founders believed in and fought for.
Heartland members and donors haven’t given up on freedom. We still believe in this marvelous thing, this miracle, we call American civilization.
On October 16, more than 500 freedom fighters will gather in Chicago to celebrate The Heartland Institute’s nineteenth year and to rededicate ourselves to defending the Founders’ vision of a free society. We will come from all parts of the country and from many backgrounds, and we will disagree on many political issues of the day. But we will be steadfast in our commitment to “this nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and our determination that it “shall not perish from the earth.”
