I hope you all have a wonderful Independence Day! The word “patriot,” meaning loyal to your country, comes from two Latin words smashed together “pa” (father) and “terra” (land). As in, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. (“Sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country.”)
As much as everyone likes to complain about the government, take heart that this is nothing new. This friction is by design. If you are wondering, politically speaking, I am one of these people who finds that the farther to the left or right a person is, the less I would want them in charge of anything that matters.
Thomas Jefferson explain below, why we do politics this way in his Notes on the State of Virginia, 1881. The idea here is that in America, everyone has a say in governance. We don’t have a king, we have elected officials. But, you have to watch those we elect like a hawk. They will misbehave, especially for money. Because as in England, from whom we won independence, people are reliably all the same when it comes to power:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1881
“Mankind will soon learn to make interested use or every power they possess. . . . human nature is the same on both sides of the Atlantic. . . 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one.”
“With money we will get men and with men we will get money, said Caesar. The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
“The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.”
“Thus in Great-Britain it is said their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; which would be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.
“But with us, wealth and wisdom have equal chance for admission into both houses.
“The concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. All the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
“An elective despotism was not the government we sought for . . .the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.
“They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.
In sum, we have to watch our elected officials, if we don’t like what our elected officials are doing, and feel that corruption has seized the heads of government, vote the bastards out. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.