Our founders (i.e. of the United States of America) are referred to as our ‘Founding Fathers.’ Now we know from our careful reading of our history that there were a significant number of women who deeply influenced our founding; however, we have become accustomed to focusing on the men who gathered together and wrote policy. What we know and at the same time don’t remember is that this gathering was composed of men who were quite diverse: in age, some were theists and some were not, they represented different interests (some agriculture, some fishing, some manufacturing, etc.), there was a diversity regarding ‘thinking styles’ and ‘problem-solving’ styles, there was diversity when it came to their education, there was diversity regarding where they lived — urban, country, region — and there was certainly a diversity when it came to their political thinking. They also had some things in common — they were ‘white,’ male and free. Although they all eventually supported seeking independence from England they certainly did not begin unified in this way and when it came time to adopt the Constitution some did not want to ratify it (the first States’ Rights folks — some wanted each state to be a country and others saw regional affiliations as the pathway; the Federalists won out, sort of).
Our founders also held one other united belief: ‘We the People. . .’ For the first time in history, a large nation, geographically if not yet in population, was going to be turned over to the people — not to a parliament, not to a king, not to a dictator and not to the armed forces. ‘We’ would hold the power and we would elect those to whom we would delegate the power — and these folks would all be civilians. The armed forces, for the first time at this scale, would be subject to civilian control and civilian oversight — unheard of.
The implications were — and are — significant. Our founders did not want a standing, national armed force. They believed that state and local ‘militias’ would suffice. Thus they wanted each male (mostly white and certainly ‘free’) to be able to have at hand a single shot musket, perhaps a single shot pistol, a knife and a hatchet. Each would automatically become a member of the local militia. These local militias were to insure that no military force, nor a single person, would take over the government and, if needed, they would be called upon to protect the nation. There is no way, of course, that they could foresee that this would be adulterated and become transformed into the ‘guns-rights’ debacle that exists today.
‘We the People’ also required that all voting citizens (then, free and mostly white males), be educated enough so they could become responsible and response-able citizens. This would mean that voting citizens needed access to public education. Citizens must be educated so they could carry out their duties as citizens. So they could become informed as to the issues that faced those they elected and so that they could then lead these elected officials; the citizens would be the leaders and those elected would ‘serve’ the citizens. ‘We the People’ required this if democracy and our Country were to survive and thrive.
To what extent have ‘We the People’ moved to ‘Those in Office’? To what extent have we (myself included) given up our being responsible and response-able citizens and taken on the ‘you-take-care-of-us’ role? How many of us truly seek to be educated Citizens? How many of us have actually taken on the mantle of ‘We the People’ — the number of folks that don’t vote and don’t care and ‘feel powerless’ seem to increase with each generation. We are powerless because WE have given up our power to those we elect — simple enough to understand. We now serve those we elect and we certainly don’t hold them accountable. We have lost the ‘We’ of the nation for the ‘We’ of the district (thanks in part to gerrymandering). We do not engage in civil discourse — our founders showed us the necessity for and the power of such discourse. They feared partisanship and sectarianism.
Are you and I willing to recommit to our founders’ powerful phrase and all that this phrase implies? Do we truly have the courage to commit to being a United Nation, a Nation of . . . ‘We the People’?
Searcher-Seeker 