Character Mattered

Thomas Jefferson was not exaggerating when he wrote in 1808 that the country was in a “fevered state.”  In just one year, the economy had crashed with a 75% decline in business nationwide. In New England there was wild talk of secession. “Tyrant’ was among the kinder words used by Jefferson’s political enemies as his relationship with Sally Hemmings was being first reported.  During one of the interludes between his debilitating headaches, Jefferson wrote to his grandson and offered some advice on how to behave when in the company of people who hold opinions different from one’s own.  

(I have not altered Jefferson’s practice of never capitalizing the first word of a sentence.)

I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many of their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another… it was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, ‘never to contradict any body.’ if he was urged to anounce an opinion, he did it rather by asking questions, as if for information, or by suggesting doubts. when I hear another express an opinion, which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it. his error does me no injury.

if a fact be mistated, it is probable he is gratified by a belief of it, & I have no right to deprive him of the gratification. if he wants information he will ask it, & then I will give it in measured terms; but if he still believes his own story, & shews a desire to dispute the fact with me, I hear him & say nothing. it is his affair not mine, if he prefers error.

there are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. the first is of young students… not yet filled up with the details, & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knolege. the other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society who have taken up a passion for politics….keep aloof, as you would from the infected subjects of yellow fever or pestilence. consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam needing medical more than moral counsel. be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence especially in politics.

 in the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights either in fact or principle. they are determined as to the facts they will believe and the opinions on which they will act. get by them therefore as you would by an angry bull: it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal…your presence will be to them what the vomit-grass is to the sick dog, a nostrum for producing ejaculation. look upon them exactly with that eye, and pity them as objects to whom you can administer only occasional ease. “[1]

Great advice. But if Jefferson were around today, he would have zero Twitter followers, no “likes” on Facebook, and would never get a spot on cable news.

[1] From Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, 24 November 1808,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-9151.

According to a recent poll, four out of ten Americans believe there is War on Christmas.[1] This idea is gaining traction beyond the original cohort of Trump supporters and has become yet another cudgel in these politically combative times.  Supply-chain disruptions, inflation, omicron, and the furious debates over mask and vaccine mandates are enough to make Christmas 2021 feel not very merry.  I believe, however, that there is way for us to come together over what “Merry Christmas” can mean to all Americans.  It will always be an expression of religious belief for Christians, but it can also be viewed as a positive and hopeful value statement for all Americans.  Call this a Merry Christmas compromise.

The American founders knew about the importance of compromise.  High school students learn that our Constitution would not have been written if the delegates at the Convention had been unable to compromise.  Unfortunately, compromise has become a weak sounding word. To compromise means to concede; to lose ground and let the other side gain some points.  The founders knew, however, that compromise was not about losing.  It was about rising above differences, finding the place where we all share the same cardinal values, and moving forward. Americans will never be in lockstep on every point, but there is a greater good to which we can all agree.  In 1789 it was “to create a more perfect Union.”   With some help from Thomas Jefferson, who thought deeply about more topics than just about anyone, I would like to focus on the central message of Jesus that transcends religion.  Saying “Merry Christmas” can be about celebrating the birth of a man who knew a lot about what it takes to form a more perfect union.  

These are the facts that are generally agreed to by historians.  Sometime between 6-4 BCE Jesus was born.  He was a devout Jew who traveled and preached lessons of love and peace around the hinterlands of Galilee between roughly  27 and 33 CE.  He got on the wrong side of the law and was executed.  Other details of his story, to say the least, have been up for debate.  Jefferson is well known for the parts of the story that he rejected, but he believed in Jesus’s message. Jefferson wrote:

His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were more pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers… and they went far beyond… inculcating universal philanthropy, not only to kindred and friends, to neighbors and countrymen; but to all mankind, gathering all into one family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, and common wants and common aids.[2] 

That’s a pretty good Merry Christmas message for 2021 to which we could all agree!

[1] https://www.fdu.edu/news/belief-in-war-on-christmas-bigger-than-ever-nationally/

[2] Doctrines of Jesus Compared with Others, 21 April 1803 (archives.gov)

Historians like turning points.  Dates leap out as the moment when history shifted.  The elusive narrative of what America means is made easy when we can simplify our thinking to what happened in one specific year.  Of course, we don’t study history for the mere sake of remembering the past.  We study history for what it tells us about the present.  In other words, purpose comes before remembering.  Today we think of the year 1621 when the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest.  Despite the odds, they survived and proved that life in the harsh New World was sustainable. They were followed by others who came with the boldest of mission statements: “we shall be as a city upon a hill.”  America was destined to be exceptional.

Recently, another year has been spotlighted as the that one best explains our nation’s story.  1619 was the defining year that set America on its painful trajectory of white supremacy.  To make our present intelligible, so the argument goes, we must recognize how the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia was our “true founding.”  There is a mountain of intention behind the choice to lift this event out of obscurity, to argue that slavery explains all our history, and then not to feel very thankful to be an American.

 I agree that 1619 was a significant year in American history, but for a different reason.  It was a year of the “perfect storm” of American paradoxes.  In July of 1619, one month before the arrival of the slave ship, the first elected legislative assembly in North America was held in Jamestown, Virginia. We would become a slave nation that also offered more freedom to more people than had ever experienced it before.  Maybe God just loves absurdities.  Certainly, one narrative does not capture our national identity.

Because it is important to separate motivation from event, it is necessary to remember that there was no impulse or thought behind the arrival of the first slave ship in Virginia.  It was a Portuguese ship that had been captured by pirates.  It was certainly not heading to Virginia, where there was no demand for enslaved workers.  Virginia landowners fulfilled the need for workers through a system of indentured servitude.  The ship was most likely heading farther south and was blown off course.  

There was a guiding principle, however, behind that other 1619 event: people have a right to govern themselves.  Slavery had been an integral part of every nation’s history.  Not so with self-government. This idea would take root and flourish in American soil.  It is important to understand the lingering impact of slavery in our country, but not at the expense of negating the fact that the United States would become the first nation to be founded not upon myth, conquest, or accident—as most others had before—but upon a demand for the protection of that fundamental right to self-government.

Something to be thankful for.

“We can either have a free society,” declared Governor Ron DeSantis at an August 4^th news conference, “or we can have a biomedical security state and I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state” people will be free “to make their own decisions about themselves.”  Every time he makes one of these stand-up-for-individual-freedom statements, he is cheered by conservative commentators and moves up the line of GOP presidential contenders.  DeSantis’s words are a good example of how conservatives have responded to the pandemic in such a way so that their actions are in alignment with the primary value of modern conservatism:  individual liberty.

Another value, however, that defines conservatism is maintaining an intellectual connection with the past. Conservatives recognize that much of who we are is a result of the decisions made by our forefathers.  Their choices established stability and ensured continuity.   This is why the theory of constitutional interpretation that stresses the importance of the original meaning of words and ideas at the time they became law is typically associated with conservative politics. To be a conservative, after all, means that there are ideas worth conserving. 

A value that is worth conserving, one every bit as important to the founders as any other, is the belief that the welfare of the community must be balanced by the rights of individuals.   Our three most influential colonies—Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania—labeled themselves “commonwealths” because they were established for the promotion of the common good and NOT for the promotion of individual freedom.  From morals to the height of fences many aspects of everyday life were regulated in early America.   Above all, laws were based on what was best for the community.  Life was precarious and survival could only be assured when the community’s interests were deemed superior to personal liberty.    Eighteenth century Americans were quite advanced when it came to their understanding of individual rights, but it was understood that individuals must place their interests in a broader context when it came to the public arena.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in the first paragraph of Federalist #1:

 It has been frequently remarked, that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend, for their political constitutions, on accident and force.

He wrote of “societies of men” operating through “good government” and making decisions “from reflection and choice.”  That might be an idea worth conserving, as opposed to DeSantis’s idea of everyone being free in the face of a pandemic “to make their own decisions about themselves.” 

In 1862 when the nation had factually, and not just figuratively, come apart the Senate commemorated our first president’s birthday with a reading of Washington’s Farewell Address.  Andrew Johnson, the only southern senator who remained in his seat after secession, said that “in view of the perilous condition of the country, I think the time has arrived when we should recur back to the days, the times, and the doings of Washington and the patriots of the Revolution, who founded the government under which we live.”  Since 1896, one senator has been selected to perform this annual duty.   When he finishes with his reading, the senator signs his name and jots down a few personal remarks in a leather-bound book.  In 1987 John McCain was asked to do the reading and these are the remarks he wrote in response to the current presidential crisis–Iran-Contra: “In this stressful time when once again the confidence of the people in their institutions is being threatened, I believe it is entirely fitting to reflect on General Washington’s emphasis on morality and government.  Closer adherence to his words is the surest path to a restored institution of the presidency and a renewal of the faith of the American people in their system of government.”  

The crisis today feels more like 1862 than 1987, so yes let’s take some time to reflect.

In his 32-page address, Washington lectured on a range of issues from foreign to domestic.  I would like to focus on two problems that he highlighted that are at the root of our current perilous times: the growing fanaticism of the political parties and the failure to understand that a man’s good character is more important than his politics when it comes to selecting a president.  Washington warned about both, the first directly and the second indirectly.

We must stay focused on the immense value of unity and not allow our divisions to be emphasized.  Unity is the “main pillar in the edifice of your real independence,” wrote Washington, it is “the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.” Washington warned that “from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth.”  We must be constantly watchful for the efforts that will be made to alienate folks from one another.  The term “identity politics” had not yet been coined, but it was a problem that Washington knew to be undermining our unity.  “The name of American…must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.”  Washington knew that the formation of political parties was unavoidable, and the two-party system was already solidifying when he left office.  We need to be vigilant and watchful, however, for its dangerous excesses “to prevent its bursting into a flame.” They can “agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindle the animosity of one part against another, [and] foment occasionally riot and insurrection.”  

Good government cannot happen without moral actors.  Washington wrote of the “habits of thinking” that guide behavior.  “Religion and morality are indispensable supports” to our political prosperity.  Without them our country will not survive.   These are the greatest “pillars of human happiness.”  Washington and all of the founders understood that limited government was only made possible by a virtuously self-regulating and public-spirited citizenry.  In 1775 Sam Adams wrote: “He who is void of virtuous Attachments in private Life, is, or very soon will be void of all Regard for his Country. There is seldom an Instance of a Man guilty of betraying his Country, who had not before lost the Feeling of moral Obligations in his private Connections.”^[1] 

Washington was not a great president because of the position he held on any of the political issues of his day.  I’m sure not many people could even list what they were.  He was known as a man of great character.  The election of Donald Trump demonstrated a lack of concern for what type of person is capable of great leadership, for not even his most avid supporters could argue that he was a man of stellar character with a strong moral center.  Trump did not create the political divisions that are ripping our country apart, after all, they concerned Washington in 1796.  Yet he did nothing to cool the passions or “prevent its bursting into a flame.”  To the contrary, he has ignited the crisis “with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms,” he has increased “the animosity of one part against another,” and finally on January 6th, 2021 he fomented a “riot and insurrection.”  

So let’s do more than just reflect, as John McCain suggested, but let’s restore Washington’s “emphasis on morality and government…as the surest path to a restored institution of the presidency and a renewal of the faith of the American people in their system of government.”  

Character really does matter. It really does.

                [1]  “Samuel Adams to James Warren – 1775,” Samuel Adams Heritage Society, last modified 2013, accessed September 4, 2016, http://www.samuel-adams-heritage.com/documents/samuel-adams-to-james-warren-1775.html.

What did liberty mean to the American founding fathers? It was not just about limited government, protecting rights, and leaving people free to live their own definition of a good life. It was to be a movement toward the highest of human flourishing. A new genus of liberty had taken root here in the fresh American soil, and there was a special something—a moral discipline—that was inherent in the American character that would allow it to thrive. Above all, real liberty was dependent upon good character.

It should still matter.

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my book!

click here for a link to the publisher’s website: https://rowman.com/Action/Search/_/Heather%20Dutton%20Dudley

Special 30% Discount Offer!

To get discount, use code LEX30AUTH20 when ordering.
*May not be combined with other offers and discounts, valid until 12/31/2020.

An email about the Electoral College has been circulating since 2016 when Donald Trump won the electoral college while losing the popular vote.  It has landed in my inbox three times, and most recently just a few weeks ago. If we run into a popular vote / electoral college incongruity again in November, this defense of our poorly understood system will surely be reinvigorated.  Unfortunately, the spirit of party infuses the debate over the value of the Electoral College.  Ideology should not, however, mangle the history.  My purpose today is not to take a position on what should be done about how we elect our presidents, but to set the history straight.

 This is how the email begins:

319 Square Miles

– It will take you approximately 39 seconds to read this email. Please read and pass it on.  Last month the newly convened, Democratic-controlled House of Representatives introduced a bill to eliminate the electoral college.  It seems that, since they couldn’t win the last presidential election under the rules that have existed for almost 250 years, they want to change the rules. Below is an excellent explanation of why this is a very bad idea.

– In their infinite wisdom, the United States ‘ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented.  Why should one or two densely populated areas speak for the whole of the nation?

            The email continues with a claim that of 3,141 counties in the United States, Trump won 3,084 of them and Clinton won 57. The statistics presented in this email have been fact-checked and debunked many times yet the message lives on.  I suppose it’s just too much fun to have one more political point to be outraged over, so folks “read and pass it on.”  The number crunching doesn’t really interest me that much. OK, Clinton actually won 487 counties; Trump still won significantly more.  The real problem is the way the writer gets the history of the Electoral College so woefully wrong.  The gist of the message rests on three faulty assertions:  1) the rules have “existed for almost 250 years,” 2) “in their infinite wisdom, the United States’ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented, and that a few densely populated areas would not speak for the entire country”, and 3) abandonment of the Electoral College will permanently benefit Democrats and hurt Republican chances at winning the presidency.

“The rules that have existed for almost 250 years”

            As originally framed, the multi-step process of electing a president that the framers created is not how we elect presidents today.  Not even close.  State legislatures were to select a number of wise and independent men, called electors, equal to the total number of their representatives in Congress.  Each elector was given two votes.  It was expected that the electors would cast one vote for a local favorite, so the second vote must go to a candidate from out of state.  When casting the second vote, it was hoped that the electors would look to a prominent statesman and patriot with a national reputation—a Jefferson or an Adams. This process would winnow the field of candidates down to the top contenders but would not necessarily produce a winner.  The framers expected the electors to scatter their votes across a broad range of regional candidates.  The top five would then go the House of Representatives where each state would cast one vote.  George Mason predicted that nineteen times out of twenty the election would end up in the House.  First place would be president and second place would be vice president. 

            It was a complicated system but the framers hoped that it would assure that the president would be selected by thoughtful men; and that turmoil, corruption and foreign intrigue would be avoided. John Jay wrote in Federalist 64 that the Electoral College “will in general be composed of the most enlightened and respectable citizens… and their votes will be directed to those men only who have become the most distinguished by their abilities and virtue.”[i]  Alexander Hamilton elaborated on the College’s many advantages in Federalist 68:

“[The electors would be] men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation…. [and] will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations…. It was also peculiarly desirable to afford as little opportunity as possible to tumult and disorder… in the election of a magistrate, who was to have so important an agency in the administration of the government as the President of the United States… Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union.”[ii]

            The system jammed up pretty quickly.  With the rise of the two-party system, the tactical coordination of electoral votes that would be required to assure that the first and second place winners were from the same party was not possible in a time of slow communication.  After the chaotic election of 1800 that almost gave us an Aaron Burr presidency, the Constitution was quickly amended.  Today each elector casts one vote for a president running with a vice president.

            The other significant changes from the original system were the idea that winner-takes-all, and that electoral votes are determined by popular vote. States quickly realized that the winner-take-all system exploited the benefit they could give to their preferred candidate.  Once a few states adopted this policy, states that continued to allow electors to distribute their votes among multiple candidates would hurt the chances of the legislature’s top choice.[iii]  In 1800, only two states used the winner-take-all system. By 1836, it was the tradition in every state but South Carolina.  Today, all but Maine and Nebraska allocate all of their electors to the winner of the statewide vote.

            The most significant change from the original formula, where a collection of wise men would select the president, to holding statewide popular votes to determine the electoral vote is poorly understood.  The framers did not collectively disdain the idea of the popular vote.  Two of the most influential delegates at the Convention, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, spoke in support of holding a popular election for the president.  This confidence in the people’s ability to decide was expressed in how quickly the states began holding popular elections to determine the electoral vote.  Within a few decades of ratification, most states were letting the people decide.

“In their infinite wisdom, the United States’ Founders created the Electoral College to ensure the States were fairly represented, and that a few densely populated areas would not speak for the entire country”

            I hear James Madison chuckling across the decades at the idea of the framers creating the Electoral College out of “their infinite wisdom.” It was more a product of their very finite patience and stamina.  Madison, identified in textbooks as the “Father of the Constitution,” was never happy with the system that the framers created and referred to it as “the faulty part of the Constitution.”[iv]  The Constitutional Convention did not finalize the details of the presidency until September of 1787, at the very end of a long hot summer.  The delegates had been laboring since May, attendance was dwindling, and they wanted to go home.  There was talk of calling it quits without finishing the draft, and holding a second convention.  The painful thought of abandoning the project, giving up on all those hard-fought compromises, and starting over, motivated many of the worn-down delegates to agree to a disagreeable system.  The “final arrangement” of the presidency, wrote Madison, occurred “in the latter stages of the session…it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience.”[v]

            How to elect the president had been one of the most confounding questions that the framers grappled with.  Many wanted Congress to select the president, some thought he should be popularly elected, another option was for voters within each state electoral district to select one or more presidential electors, others argued that the nation should be divided into three districts with each one electing a chief executive, perhaps each state would select a “favorite son” and then Congress would choose from the (at that time) thirteen choices, or possibly fifteen congressmen could be chosen by lottery and they would immediately meet in private and select the president.  The debates meandered.  The delegates could not reach consensus. 

            Finally, on the morning of September 3^rd, a committee that had been given the thankless task of settling on a plan for how to elect the president presented their conclusion.  The president would be elected by Congress.  It was done…well maybe not.  John Dickinson, an infrequent attendee at deliberations due to his poor health, warned that the Constitution would be rejected if the people played no role in selecting the president.  As a result of the musical 1776 and HBO’s John Adams, Dickinson is primarily known to posterity as the guy who wouldn’t sign the Declaration of Independence.   Perhaps more so than any other delegate, however, he should be known as the framer ultimately responsible for the Electoral College.  Not willing to toil with the problem any longer, the exhausted framers acquiesced to one of the plans that had been bandied about but rejected in the early days of the Convention.   

            Defenders of the Electoral College mistakenly believe that it was designed to protect the smaller states.  Today it works to dilute the voice of the voters from the largest states, but that was not what the framers intended.  After all, if the system was properly working the number of electors in each state would accurately reflect the population.[vi]  The framers expected the large states would dominate the electoral vote, then the power of the small states would be amplified when the final selection went to the House. 

            There are only two reasons why the Electoral College was acceptable to the framers, none of which are relevant today.  First, as mentioned above, the electors would be more knowledgeable and discerning than the populace.  Second, the Electoral College enlarged the voice of the slave states.  Madison, who supported the idea of having the president popularly elected, wrote “there was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.”[vii] 

            In other words, the creation of the Electoral College was a compromise that allowed for the political reality of slavery.  Popular election was a disadvantage for the slave states.  The 3/5s Compromise, that had been hashed out by the framers when it came to determining how many seats each state would have in the House, counted every five slaves as three citizens.  More seats in the House meant more electors for the state.  For example, at the time of ratification both New Hampshire and South Carolina had the same number of free citizens.  Yet South Carolina had two more seats in the House (and two more electors) as a result of partially counting the 100,000 slaves.  Both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania each had more free citizens than Virginia, nonetheless Virginia’s 300,000 slaves gave them five additional seats—the largest delegation in the House and therefore more electors than any other state.  Up until the Civil War, the slave states consistently had about one-third more House seats—and therefore electoral votes—than they deserved due to the 3/5s Compromise.

Abandonment of the Electoral College will permanently benefit Democrats and hurt Republican chances at winning the presidency

            In 2000 and 2016 a Democrat won the popular vote and a Republican won the presidency.  As a result, many argue that without the Electoral College a Republican can’t win.  I don’t think that two elections predict the future—especially when one of them featured the two most unpopular candidates in the history of US elections.  Taking a broader view, since the founding of the “Grand Old Party,” Republicans have won over 50% of the popular vote in nine elections (Grant, T. Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Eisenhower, Nixon, HW Bush, and Reagan).  The Democrats have done that only twice (F. Roosevelt and LBJ).  When the Republican party offers a reasonable choice and manages to avoid promoting a candidate who merely has a talent, in Hamilton’s words, “for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity,” but instead offers a candidate “of merit” in whom the people can place their “esteem and confidence”[viii] they should still be able to win the popular vote.

[i] John Jay, “The Federalist Papers: No. 64” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed64.asp

[ii] Alexander Hamilton, “ The Mode of Electing the President, From the New York Packet.
Friday, March 14, 1788.The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp

[iii] In 1823 James Madison backed a Constitutional amendment that would thwart the winner-take-all tradition, and have the electors popularly elected by districts within each state.   

[iv] “From James Madison to George Hay, 23 August 1823,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-03-02-0109. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Retirement Series, vol. 3, 1 March 1823 – 24 February 1826, ed. David B. Mattern, J. C. A. Stagg, Mary Parke Johnson, and Katherine E. Harbury. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016, pp. 108–111.]

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Today elector votes are not equitably distributed.  For example, Wyoming, has three Electoral College votes, California has 66 times as many people — but only 18 times as many Electoral College votes. The larger the state (e.g., Texas, Florida, New York) the less power does each voter have in an election

[vii] James Madison, “Madison Debates, July 19, 1787,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_719.asp.

[viii] Hamilton, “The Mode of Electing”

I don’t know if we are in the midst of a revolution; or maybe multiple revolutions. It feels like it.  There are a lot of issues that don’t seem to be related—whether to wear a face mask, race and the police, reinterpreting our history and questioning who should be celebrated—yet each ultimately comes down to questions concerning liberty, equality, and justice.  That’s why they matter.  Every major political or social issue in United States history has gotten traction when they dig into one or all of those fundamental American values.  Which brings me to the Declaration of Independence.

The approval of the Declaration by the Second Continental Congress on July 4^th is celebrated as our nation’s birthday.  No matter that it wasn’t the act that actually established independence.  That was accomplished two days earlier with the vote on the Resolution for Independence on July 2^nd—a day no one remembers.  How wonderful that our nation’s birthday is not marked by a political or military event, but by Thomas Jefferson’s grand statement of universal principles about how people are supposed to live.  We must recognize our inherent equality, be free to make our own choices, participate in the making of laws that will limit those choices, and feel safe as we go about pursuing happiness. 

Often when I read the Declaration, a different word or phrase will pull me in.  Perhaps in response to the current confusing swirl of events, I have been drawn to the less well-known second half of the second paragraph, and specifically to the word “prudence.”

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;”

Jefferson was a careful writer; probably more so than ever when writing the Declaration.  There were no platitudes or words that were not thoughtfully chosen.  In the middle section of the introduction, in his wonderfully concise and graceful way of expressing the most complicated ideas, Jefferson was assuring mankind that although the American people were talking revolution there was a proper way to bring about change.  We were proceeding with prudence.  We were not in some hot mess of inflamed passions.  On this July 4^th 2020, I am thinking about the need for prudence.

Jefferson’s choice of that word reflected the influence of Aristotle.  Prudence was the most important of Aristotle’s intellectual virtues.  It was central to how a good person goes about doing the right thing in the right way.  At the heart of prudence was deliberation among a range of values: What is useful? What is noble?  What is just? What is appropriate?

I’d like to select just one of the topics off the front-pages.  What to do about past choices to celebrate some of the mighty men with statues and namesake buildings?  Statues should not be removed by mobs with chains, or by meek mayors and governors trying to placate those mobs.  There are a range of important values that need to be carefully considered.  The recent decision by Princeton University to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from a building provides a good template for prudent decision making.  The Princeton Board of Trustees began deliberating over the name change in 2015.  After an extensive review of the legacy of Woodrow Wilson, it was decided to be more honest about his history, but to keep names when “the original reasons for adopting the names remain valid.”  The Board recently took up the topic again, and concluded—if I may paraphrase them by quoting Jefferson—that names on buildings “long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”  The Board appears to have carefully balanced the fact of Wilson’s contributions that should be honored with his attitudes and actions that were harmful.  The Board concluded that “Wilson’s racism was significant and consequential even by the standards of his own time. He segregated the federal civil service after it had been racially integrated for decades, thereby taking America backward in its pursuit of justice.”

Many will not be happy with the decisions that are made about any of the problems that are currently consuming the news. Custom is conservative and change is hard. How far wrong can we go if we follow the advice of Aristotle as seconded by Jefferson?

Happy birthday America!  The land of the free and the prudent.