As revelations are emerging out of Washington, DC’s establishment regarding the recent and criminal history of our intelligence and investigative agencies, we are hearing pleas to ignore the truth of these events, as they are in the past and no longer relevant. Another pleading is: things are going so well… Do we need to know all this?
Some history needs an eternal presence in any democracy, such as the knowledge of the arrogance that doomed the glories of ancient Athens or the concentration of power in the single party of the Julio-Claudians, which ripped up the Roman Republic.
But the greatest of all histories is our own, and no greater example is furnished than by our founder, George Washington, following his victory at Yorktown by land and sea over the world’s foremost army and navy: Washington could have made himself an American Caesar, but instead, he laid down his office and resigned from the army he led so successfully by handing his power to the Congress, the people’s representatives. Washington’s example was unexampled in the history of the world since the days of Cincinnatus.
America should lend an eternal ear to the words of our nation’s founder: “The preservation of our liberties depends on the quality of our education. The lesson of history teaches us the necessity of preserving liberty and fostering virtue.”
The occasion of America’s Constitutional Convention is another of the most original histories in the world. Fifty-five representatives of 13 new states and their people convened in the summer of 1787 to determine how the people would rule their government. For the first time in history, a system of government was devised that was not based on one or a few people determining the fate of every subject in a common keystone of tyranny. Rather, a system of elections was devised whereby the people determined by vote who would represent their interests, and the United States government would therefore be ruled by the general citizenry deciding who their senators, congressmen, and president were.
Furthermore, a Bill of Rights was added to protect the common citizens of a government founded in liberty and based on the freedom of the individual. Those rights include the freedom of assembly (and therefore association), the freedom of faith, the freedom of the press, and the rights of the accused…including the presumption of innocence.
George Washington provided our history with other unprecedented acts. While holding the office of President of the United States, he executed laws he did not personally agree with, but did so according to his oath as chief executor of the nation’s laws. And, in accordance with the Constitution, Washington did what history has proved time and again to be the most difficult thing for any human being or single political party to do: he voluntarily relinquished his power to his successor, John Adams.
Which brings us to our more modern history. If history had more of a presence in our schools, we might have been prescient of things to come when it was noticed by some that the IRS was targeting associations of the conservative Tea Party movement, or that the Little Sisters of the Poor were being targeted by the HHS for their faith, or that Sharyl Atkisson was being targeted by the FBI for writing articles they did not approve.
Given history, we citizens might have foreseen the gathering of tyranny and the following consequences…
On December 9, 2016, one man, then-president Barack Obama, gathered 28 people, his few adamant loyalists, to criminally subvert the Constitution by the concerted efforts of his intelligence and investigative agencies, with the aid of a propagandist media, in a coup attempt to overthrow the duly and constitutionally elected presidency of Donald Trump.
Obama orchestrated a circular firing squad around the new administration with intelligence and leaks being invented and generated by agencies, with false, propagandist news stories being made up by the media, with Democrat politicians calling for investigations and public hearings and with Republican politicians consenting to them, all to create so much pressure, the Trump presidency could not survive it. One or a few people attempted to overthrow a president to maintain one political party’s power—that is historical—it is the doorway to humanity’s common keep of tyranny.
That Trump survived this orchestrated, unprecedented coup attempt launched by Obama’s praetorian guard is in keeping with a uniquely American history: some virtuous Americans never surrender.
What needs to be learned, written, and taught about this episode is that it could only have occurred because the last 100 years have proved an unceasing history of the concentration of wealth and power in one city, Washington, D.C., and in one office, the presidency.
History has proven time and again: when so much power and wealth reside in one place, one party, and one person, the temptation to keep that power is unbearable.
That is the precise reason for the creation of our Constitution, which deliberately diffused power.
Should we ignore this episode of our history and just move on? Listen to Washington’s duly elected successor, John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever our wishes… they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. History always teaches us the value of the truth.”
The presence of history’s truth in our common education is an invaluable present a wise citizenry gives itself, to avert the pain of tyranny’s common prison.
Richard C. Lyons is the author of The DNA of Democracy Series: the how and why behind our government as it was founded and the how and why behind how it has changed over the past century. www.richardclyons.com