James Madison was the “Father of the Constitution” and championed the idea of checks and balances.

This will be my last post for 2009.  It seems amazing that we are already witnessing the close of the first millennial decade.  As we move so rapidly into the twenty first century we seem to be picking up both speed and weight.  A scary thought to those of us who were born in the 1950’s, and probably scary to everyone else as well.

If you are reading this, I thank you for the opportunity to express my humble viewpoints.  I realize I must seem like a modern day Don Quixote.  I know the usefulness of these exercises is in doubt—the sound of one hand clapping.  By way of defense of this peculiar behavior, I’d like to address a couple of questions that people must be wondering about:  What in the heck are you doing, and why are you doing it?

Well, first off, I have the time.  These little policy positions hone my writing skills and afford me the opportunity to bring my thinking into focus.  But it is more than that, as I described in one of my early posts, I grew up in a very political household, and once politics gets into your blood, it’s pretty near impossible to get it out.  Also, I think people are, by nature, problem-solvers; everyone wants to ease suffering and make the world a better place.  People may assign differing weights to different problems based on how such problems affect them personally, and it’s also human nature to become “invested” in positions, which can make one lose sight of the big picture.    However, I think everyone, with the exception of psychopaths and snake oil salesmen want to make a difference.

These things were certainly not trivial matters to the founding generation, and it is an indictment of our society that we don’t share their commitment to knowledge, reason and philosophy.  We also don’t live up to their standards in terms of willingness to sacrifice for the commonwealth of the nation.

These men were intellectual giants, students of the enlightenment who read Greek and Latin and the works of Locke, Hume and Montesquieu.  Certainly they were equally suspicious of a strong central government, but they understood that the foundation of government had to be both free and stable.

Benjamin Franklin managed to blend concepts of both the Enlightenment and those of the Puritans

All of this is particularly amazing when you consider that twenty-five of the fifty-five members of the Continental Congress had no formal college education of any kind.  Such self-taught men included the likes of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.  It is ironic that, with all of today’s informational opportunities, today’s citizens demonstrate short attention spans and don’t tolerate such lofty discussions on matters of governance.  Compare these giant’s thirst for knowledge with today’s generation:  during the late 1700’s, English booksellers sold more books in the colonies than in England.  What a remarkable group of peasant farmers and rabble-rousers.

George Washington, known as the "Father of the Country" was the strong leader who coalesced the nation.

Similarly, we do not share their sense of sacrifice, which ultimately translates into a leadership and statesmanship vacuum.  Today’s politicians and pundits are overly concerned with just two things:  winning and money.  Winning and money, combined with the electorate’s preference for twenty-second “elevator” answers that conform to a predetermined agenda, have combined to lower our expectations.  Today our founders would be considered boy scouts, seriously out-of-touch with the reality of power politics.   However, the founder’s success at forging such an incredible and vibrant democracy stemmed from their willingness to eschew the trappings of power.  George Washington famously rejected offers of kingship:  “I did not wage war against George III only to become George I,” he said.

And so, in my own meager way, I suppose I am trying to emulate these great Americans.  What would the Constitution have been but a pile of papers if it had not been for these incredible people?