http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/14702591.htm
Posted on Wed, May. 31, 2006
Founders faced many issues still here today
And while many were handled more sternly, these politicians gave us a system that
tried to put human nature to its best use.
By Richard Brookhiser
They're on our money, and on Mount Rushmore. They were first in war, first in
peace, and first in politics. What would the Founders do about the hot-button
issues that vex us today?
Top of the list for us their heirs is immigration, chiefly illegal. Immigrants
came to 18th-century America, especially late in the 1790s when thousands of
French and Irish fleeing turmoil and repression in their homelands landed here.
Many founders were alarmed by this influx.
In 1798, Congress, worried about "hordes of wild Irishmen ... com[ing] here with a
view to disturb our tranquility," passed an Alien Act, allowing President John
Adams to deport dangerous aliens on his own finding, without trial. These views
backfired at the ballot box. Thomas Jefferson beat Adams in the election of 1800,
in part, by catering to the ethnic and immigrant vote (he called the Alien Act a
"dupery" imposed on the public).
As for illegal immigrants, most Founders would probably endorse the general
principle stated by Alexander Hamilton during another controversy of the 1790s,
over unpopular whiskey taxes: "How can a government of laws exist where the laws
are disrespected and disobeyed?"
Several of the Founders were multilingual. Gouverneur Morris, draftsman of the
Constitution, spent a decade in Europe, speaking French and German with diplomats,
businessmen and girlfriends. But English was the national language in fact, if not
law. John Jay wrote, in the Federalist Papers, No. 2, that we were "one united
people ... descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language." This
was not literally true of everyone: Jay's own grandparents were French and Dutch;
his Dutch grandfather, it was said, could "scarce speak English." But their
grandson grew up speaking the common tongue well enough to coauthor a great book
in it.
The late 18th century was not a good time for gay rights. When Jefferson was
assigned to revise Virginia's penal code during the Revolution, he suggested that
sodomites be castrated (his fellow Virginians didn't go along). Soldiers who were
caught committing homosexual acts were drummed out of the Continental Army. But
when Gen. George Washington got a letter telling him that Baron von Steuben, his
Prussian-born drillmaster, had been a pedophile back in Germany, he ignored it as
unsubstantiated gossip. He would not convict a man on innuendo.
When the Founders ratified the Second Amendment in 1791, they had in mind English
politics of the 1680s, when a Catholic king (James II) was thought to be scheming
to impose his religion on a Protestant nation by using a powerful army. After
James was deposed, England adopted a bill of rights, including a right to bear
arms. A century later the Founders supported militias and an armed citizenry, not
to protect Protestants against Catholics, but to allow the states or the people to
defend themselves against a national government gone wild. They were surrounded by
guns in their daily lives - sometimes to their cost. Two signers of the
Constitution and one signer of the Declaration were killed in duels, which were
illegal everywhere, but prosecuted nowhere, since that was how gentlemen defended
their honor.
The most common drug, then as now, was alcohol. One of the justifications that
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton advanced for his controversial whiskey tax
was that it would lower consumption: "[R]endering the article dearer might
restrain too free an indulgence of such habits." The big government man of the
founding addressed the drug problem of his day, and proposed a tax. It is unlikely
he would have fought the war on drugs as we do now.
The Founders confronted numerous other issues - terrorism, rogue nations, race,
taxes, judicial review - two centuries before we have. Why do their struggles
still interest us? Hasn't the world changed beyond recognition from their time to
ours?
Not too much. We live in a rather young country (how remote are the founding
fathers of China?) with rather old institutions (how many revolutions has France
had since the 18th century?). Though the Founders would be stunned by innovations
such as cars, computers and good teeth, they would remind us that passions - for
honor, fame, power and money - haven't changed at all. They gave us a system that
tried to put human nature to good use, while limiting the damage it did. They can
still show us how to think and, in many cases, what to think about.
Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a columnist for the
New York Observer; his latest book is What Would the Founders Do? Our Questions,
Their Answers (www.founderblogs.com). He is speaking at the National Constitution
Center on Monday at 6:30 p.m. Reservations required, 215-409-6700 or
www.constitutioncenter.org.
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