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Like America, 4th of July is Dead. Happy Tyrant's Day. Here We Are Again. [View all]
The Founders had a major fear for the future of the American republic: that it would collapse into tyranny.
Some day a leader would win an election for president and then use the power and resources available to him as chief executive to disembowel democracy to the point of transforming it into an autocracy. And they knew just what sort of character would do that: a flamboyant charlatan who lied at every turn, used those lies to channel resentments at the status quo into votes that sent him into office, and then did not scruple to abuse his new power to amass even more power. In short, they feared the election of a Donald Trump.
They knew a lot about tyrants. They had worked very hard to get out from under one, King George III of Great Britain. Since 1760, when he ascended to the throne, they had watched in horror as Great Britain’s limited monarchy and Parliamentary democracy, once revered as the best government in the world, slid into practices that history taught prepared the way for tyranny. Benjamin Franklin identified these in 1775 when he wrote home from London about the “extream Corruption prevalent among all Orders ofMen in this old rotten State [and the] Numberless and needless Places, enormous Salaries, Pensions, Perquisites, Bribes, groundless Quarrels, foolish Expeditions, false Accompts or no Accompts, Contracts and Jobbs [that] devour all Revenue and produce continual Necessity in the Midst of natural Plenty.”
The Declaration of Independence featured the Founders’ long list of George III’s crimes against America, “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Particularly galling was his “transporting large Armies of Foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny,” an action “totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.” For George Washington, the hiring of the mercenaries was the final piece of evidence that George III had become a despot. Franklin, in designing a Great Seal for the new country, chose a biblical scene with the motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
Some day a leader would win an election for president and then use the power and resources available to him as chief executive to disembowel democracy to the point of transforming it into an autocracy. And they knew just what sort of character would do that: a flamboyant charlatan who lied at every turn, used those lies to channel resentments at the status quo into votes that sent him into office, and then did not scruple to abuse his new power to amass even more power. In short, they feared the election of a Donald Trump.
They knew a lot about tyrants. They had worked very hard to get out from under one, King George III of Great Britain. Since 1760, when he ascended to the throne, they had watched in horror as Great Britain’s limited monarchy and Parliamentary democracy, once revered as the best government in the world, slid into practices that history taught prepared the way for tyranny. Benjamin Franklin identified these in 1775 when he wrote home from London about the “extream Corruption prevalent among all Orders ofMen in this old rotten State [and the] Numberless and needless Places, enormous Salaries, Pensions, Perquisites, Bribes, groundless Quarrels, foolish Expeditions, false Accompts or no Accompts, Contracts and Jobbs [that] devour all Revenue and produce continual Necessity in the Midst of natural Plenty.”
The Declaration of Independence featured the Founders’ long list of George III’s crimes against America, “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” Particularly galling was his “transporting large Armies of Foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny,” an action “totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized nation.” For George Washington, the hiring of the mercenaries was the final piece of evidence that George III had become a despot. Franklin, in designing a Great Seal for the new country, chose a biblical scene with the motto, “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/our-founding-fathers-feared-a-trump
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