President’s Message: Ideas for Thought

My message is a little different this month. I thought this would be a good time for us to hear from some of the Founding Fathers and a few former Presidents of the United States. I didn’t write these warnings. These are the words of these beloved patriots and includes some explanation from the National Center for Constitutional Studies. The link to their website follows this message.   

My Best to all!  

Lynn Badertscher

The Warnings of George Washington

In 1796, George Washington wrote to the nation in his Farewell Address as he stepped away from the Presidency. Almost prophetically he anticipated the encroachment of one branch of government over the others. He said: “It is important … that … those entrusted with its administration … confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department any encroachment upon another…. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create … a real despotism.” Nothing aroused the wrath of Washington more than arrogant bureaucrats actually changing the fundamental structure of government by sheer despotic assertion of administrative power. He said: “If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpations; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”

The Warnings of John Adams

President John Adams, a key figure in American political history, expressed deep reservations about the two-party system. He warned, “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and converting measures in opposition to each other.” Adams recognized that such polarization could force voters into a perpetual choice between suboptimal candidates, rather than selecting truly virtuous leadership. 

The “lesser evil” argument in today’s political landscape often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Voters often compromise their ideals to support the less objectionable candidate, political parties have reduced incentives to nominate exemplary leaders. This pattern can result in a downward spiral, where ethical standards decline little by little over time and the bar for acceptable behavior in public office continues to lower.

The Warnings of James Madison

Madison was known to be the philosophical soul-mate of Thomas Jefferson, but sometimes his contemporaries considered him somewhat paranoid and suffering from fears for the nation that would never happen. But the passing of time was to prove him more insightful than many of his contemporaries had thought. He said: “If Congress can employ money indefinitely, for the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, the establishing in like manner schools throughout the union; they may assume the provision of the poor…. Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.”

The Warnings of Benjamin Franklin

Franklin served as one of the foremost architects in structuring the Constitution, and while most of the Founders were congratulating one another on their remarkable charter of liberty, Benjamin Franklin injected this note of prophetic insight. “I agree to this Constitution … and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” All of this went along with Franklin’s basic philosophy of sound government; namely, that no people can remain free if they become wicked and immoral. When a society decays to the point where people begin to fear for their lives and their property, the demands for a police state have always been inevitable.

The Warnings of Abraham Lincoln

I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. At the age of twenty-eight, Abraham Lincoln gave one of the great speeches of his life. He had been asked to speak at the Young Men’s Lyceum at Springfield, Illinois (1837). He chose as his subject, “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” Lincoln deplored the spirit of lawlessness that was increasing among the people. He said: “There is even now something of ill omen amongst us. I mean that increasing disregard for law which pervades the country — the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passion in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice. The disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that it now exists in ours … it would be a violation of truth to deny.” He was not afraid of invasion from without, but he saw the ominous possibility of self-destruction from within. He said: “At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?

The Prophesy of Barack Obama