A President At War.
Looking at American history of the last three decades, it appears as if each President considers it a sine qua non of his Presidential office to engage in at least one war of his own. Some of these have been ridiculous, others preposterous, most of them terribly costly, unproductive, and unpopular, which means that none have been wars of necessity. One is also well justified to say that none of them has furthered American interest or contributed to the national interest of any other nation, including America’s closest ally Israel.
One may argue that wars have always been a virtual attribute of American history, ever since the American nation was born in the Revolutionary War of Independence. But there is a crucial difference here. Most of those earlier wars were indeed wars of necessity, when the nation was either directly attacked or threatened by a real or at least partially imaginary danger. And besides, unlike the most recent Presidents, none of the old guard ever ‘wanted’ a war. Even LBJ, who may be considered the most warmongering President before the recent events, because of his escalation of the war in Vietnam, was deeply resentful of that war, whereas the alleged Republican hawk Richard Nixon went out of his way to end it, and did, even though the war did not quite end on favorable, or even face-saving, for America, terms.
…To say nothing of Woodrow Wilson and FDR, desperately trying to keep America out of WWI and WWII respectively, or President Truman, explicitly forbidding an escalation of the war in Korea, preferring rather that the problem of Korea should remain unresolved. (Regarding this, see my posted entry Stalin’s Korean Charade.)
In the early era of America’s independence, the first three Presidents unhappily embroiled in a succession of lingering conflicts were trying to avoid a war at almost any cost, but it was the fourth one, no less reluctant, who had it dumped into his lap. It was, of course, James Madison.
Concerning Madison, the 4th President of the United States, also called Father Of The Constitution, there are facts and reports, scattered everywhere, which bear witness to his indisputable greatness. Chevalier de la Luzerne, contemporary French Minister to the United States, wrote that Madison was “regarded as the man of the soundest judgment in Congress.” Although the memorable 1812 war with the British happened on his watch, he never wanted it, but did accept it as a fact, drawn into it by the hawks in the Congress. Despite thus becoming a war-time President, which is frequently conducive to a more authoritarian rule than in time of peace, Madison is all the more remarkable for having lived up to the following statement he had made back in 1793:
“If we advert to the nature of republican government we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”
Whether rightly or not, the legendary American statesman-orator Henry Clay called him, after Washington, “our greatest statesman.”
Of Madison’s recorded pearls of wisdom, I find his observations most instructive in four areas in particular. These are his views on war, democracy, religion, and education. In this entry I am concentrating on his view on war. After all, he was indeed a president at war. Remarkably, what he said about war has been uncannily relevant to our time, yet there seems to be no one in Washington today to take proper heed of his words.
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land,” he says, “it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
It is therefore imperative that any war be taken seriously, and only as a collective public effort. “War should only be declared by the authority of the people whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits… The executive has no right in any case to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war… Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
The ultimate danger of conducting irresponsible wars abroad consists in losing freedom at home. Because it is not possible to trust a government given too much power under the pretext of reacting to some external or internal danger, and using this pretext to conduct totally unnecessary wars. “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”
And now, these prophetic words:
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
The British-American war of 1812-1815 was not James Madison’s war. He was just an extremely reluctant president caught up in a war he had always wanted to avoid. But in spite of this calamity, as befits a genuine statesman, Madison did use this sad opportunity to teach a lesson about war to future generations. Too bad, that the current American generation has no interest in history lessons, even when they are given by the best and brightest of her glorious history.
Our next Madison entry will touch upon his views on other important subjects of national policy and public life.
Madison Speaks.
(Madison On Democracy, Religion, Education, And… Marxian Revolution.)
It is well known to students of American history that Madison and Jefferson were not only friends, but held very similar political opinions. They even organized a political party together, which they called Republican (later historians started calling it rather clumsily Democratic-Republican, to avoid confusion with Lincoln’s Republican Party, which was quite different from the first one, and has survived as one of the two dominant parties to the present day), set in opposition to the Federalists. Madison was a natural proponent of what we know as “Jeffersonian democracy,” which means that he was very much worried about majority rule and the “tyranny of the many.” (For the record, this phrase belongs to Voltaire, whereas the far more famous phrase “tyranny of the majority” was later coined by the great prophet Tocqueville!) He, Madison, was actually the one who drafted the historical Bill of Rights, that is the first ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
In this connection, the following Madison quotes on the subject deserve our attention.---
“In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.” The next quote repeats essentially the same thing but slightly differently. “There is no maxim in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”
The third quote I have chosen is very much to my taste. In it, Madison advocates elitism to enlighten a much subdued and not exactly “popular” democracy.--- “If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.”
Madison’s view of religion goes to the heart of the principle of separation of church and state.---
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
The next two quotes are closely related and foreshadow the famous Kierkegaardian argument.
“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
“Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”
Our next topic is education.
“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
“What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”
The next quote is extremely pertinent to the current situation, which I have elsewhere called “the dumbing-down of America.” Madison here sends a clear warning to the future generations: “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or, perhaps, both.”
His next opinion on subsidized education for talented youths is also most commendable, and it is followed, only to a certain point, in modern American education.---
“Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.”
My point here, which I have obviously expressed in a number of other places as well, is that it’s not enough to support one outstanding talent in education. The system of education must of necessity “aim high,” rather than “aim low,” which is unfortunately the case. It is essential to raise the general “average” student level of education, which is something definitely not being done.
Ironically, in that last educational quote, Madison shows a certain naïveté: “Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
In fact, “Learned Institutions” have become mouthpieces of government and special interest propaganda in recent times and it appears that one ought to send a strong warning about possible corruption in such places, which is something Madison does not do. Perhaps in his time the Academia was not as tainted as it is today.
And finally, Madison… the Marxist! Read the following attentively, to see what I mean: “By rendering the labor of one the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity, on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.”
As for me, I am speechless!
Looking at American history of the last three decades, it appears as if each President considers it a sine qua non of his Presidential office to engage in at least one war of his own. Some of these have been ridiculous, others preposterous, most of them terribly costly, unproductive, and unpopular, which means that none have been wars of necessity. One is also well justified to say that none of them has furthered American interest or contributed to the national interest of any other nation, including America’s closest ally Israel.
One may argue that wars have always been a virtual attribute of American history, ever since the American nation was born in the Revolutionary War of Independence. But there is a crucial difference here. Most of those earlier wars were indeed wars of necessity, when the nation was either directly attacked or threatened by a real or at least partially imaginary danger. And besides, unlike the most recent Presidents, none of the old guard ever ‘wanted’ a war. Even LBJ, who may be considered the most warmongering President before the recent events, because of his escalation of the war in Vietnam, was deeply resentful of that war, whereas the alleged Republican hawk Richard Nixon went out of his way to end it, and did, even though the war did not quite end on favorable, or even face-saving, for America, terms.
…To say nothing of Woodrow Wilson and FDR, desperately trying to keep America out of WWI and WWII respectively, or President Truman, explicitly forbidding an escalation of the war in Korea, preferring rather that the problem of Korea should remain unresolved. (Regarding this, see my posted entry Stalin’s Korean Charade.)
In the early era of America’s independence, the first three Presidents unhappily embroiled in a succession of lingering conflicts were trying to avoid a war at almost any cost, but it was the fourth one, no less reluctant, who had it dumped into his lap. It was, of course, James Madison.
Concerning Madison, the 4th President of the United States, also called Father Of The Constitution, there are facts and reports, scattered everywhere, which bear witness to his indisputable greatness. Chevalier de la Luzerne, contemporary French Minister to the United States, wrote that Madison was “regarded as the man of the soundest judgment in Congress.” Although the memorable 1812 war with the British happened on his watch, he never wanted it, but did accept it as a fact, drawn into it by the hawks in the Congress. Despite thus becoming a war-time President, which is frequently conducive to a more authoritarian rule than in time of peace, Madison is all the more remarkable for having lived up to the following statement he had made back in 1793:
“If we advert to the nature of republican government we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.”
Whether rightly or not, the legendary American statesman-orator Henry Clay called him, after Washington, “our greatest statesman.”
Of Madison’s recorded pearls of wisdom, I find his observations most instructive in four areas in particular. These are his views on war, democracy, religion, and education. In this entry I am concentrating on his view on war. After all, he was indeed a president at war. Remarkably, what he said about war has been uncannily relevant to our time, yet there seems to be no one in Washington today to take proper heed of his words.
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land,” he says, “it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
It is therefore imperative that any war be taken seriously, and only as a collective public effort. “War should only be declared by the authority of the people whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits… The executive has no right in any case to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war… Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.”
The ultimate danger of conducting irresponsible wars abroad consists in losing freedom at home. Because it is not possible to trust a government given too much power under the pretext of reacting to some external or internal danger, and using this pretext to conduct totally unnecessary wars. “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.”
And now, these prophetic words:
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
The British-American war of 1812-1815 was not James Madison’s war. He was just an extremely reluctant president caught up in a war he had always wanted to avoid. But in spite of this calamity, as befits a genuine statesman, Madison did use this sad opportunity to teach a lesson about war to future generations. Too bad, that the current American generation has no interest in history lessons, even when they are given by the best and brightest of her glorious history.
Our next Madison entry will touch upon his views on other important subjects of national policy and public life.
Madison Speaks.
(Madison On Democracy, Religion, Education, And… Marxian Revolution.)
It is well known to students of American history that Madison and Jefferson were not only friends, but held very similar political opinions. They even organized a political party together, which they called Republican (later historians started calling it rather clumsily Democratic-Republican, to avoid confusion with Lincoln’s Republican Party, which was quite different from the first one, and has survived as one of the two dominant parties to the present day), set in opposition to the Federalists. Madison was a natural proponent of what we know as “Jeffersonian democracy,” which means that he was very much worried about majority rule and the “tyranny of the many.” (For the record, this phrase belongs to Voltaire, whereas the far more famous phrase “tyranny of the majority” was later coined by the great prophet Tocqueville!) He, Madison, was actually the one who drafted the historical Bill of Rights, that is the first ten Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
In this connection, the following Madison quotes on the subject deserve our attention.---
“In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.” The next quote repeats essentially the same thing but slightly differently. “There is no maxim in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.”
The third quote I have chosen is very much to my taste. In it, Madison advocates elitism to enlighten a much subdued and not exactly “popular” democracy.--- “If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.”
Madison’s view of religion goes to the heart of the principle of separation of church and state.---
“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”
The next two quotes are closely related and foreshadow the famous Kierkegaardian argument.
“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
“Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.”
Our next topic is education.
“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
“The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.”
“What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?”
The next quote is extremely pertinent to the current situation, which I have elsewhere called “the dumbing-down of America.” Madison here sends a clear warning to the future generations: “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or, perhaps, both.”
His next opinion on subsidized education for talented youths is also most commendable, and it is followed, only to a certain point, in modern American education.---
“Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.”
My point here, which I have obviously expressed in a number of other places as well, is that it’s not enough to support one outstanding talent in education. The system of education must of necessity “aim high,” rather than “aim low,” which is unfortunately the case. It is essential to raise the general “average” student level of education, which is something definitely not being done.
Ironically, in that last educational quote, Madison shows a certain naïveté: “Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.”
In fact, “Learned Institutions” have become mouthpieces of government and special interest propaganda in recent times and it appears that one ought to send a strong warning about possible corruption in such places, which is something Madison does not do. Perhaps in his time the Academia was not as tainted as it is today.
And finally, Madison… the Marxist! Read the following attentively, to see what I mean: “By rendering the labor of one the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity, on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.”
As for me, I am speechless!
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