BECAUSE IT MATTERS!

By Edwin Cooney

Okay, here’s the bottom line:  I’m a reasonably comfortable guy when it comes to almost every aspect of my existence.  I’m fortunate enough to have a substantial handful of good friends.  Like most people, I like to think my friends are as comfortable as I am in Twenty-first Century America.  Sadly, however, I must report that many of my friends are so uncomfortable, especially with our current socio/political situation, that seemingly they’re near despair.

A few days ago, I got the piece you’re about to read from my friend. I’ll call him "Zack" although that’s not his name.  Zack believes, as so many do it seems, that for the most part we’re being governed by fools or at least near fools.  Hence, he sent me the following message:

“Remember that I once told you that one day we’ll be ruled by mediocrity.”

H. L. Mencken, born 1880, died 1956, a journalist, satirist and critic, wrote in an editorial appearing in the Baltimore Evening Sun, on July 26, 1920:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will at last reach their heart's desire and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and complete narcissistic moron."

That editorial by Henry Louis Mencken was written during the 1920 presidential campaign that featured Ohio Governor James M. Cox and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the Democrats against Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding and Massachusetts Governor Calvin Coolidge for the Republicans.

Since neither Mencken nor Harding is my topic here, I’ll simply make one observation about each of them.  Warren Harding, except for being a man of the best intentions, in most ways was not suited to be president (although it must be noted that he had several golden presidential moments).  Henry Lewis Mencken was a remarkably brilliant and often irreverent journalist and socio/political commentator.

Like Mencken and such “Founding Fathers" as Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, and Governeur Morris, my friend Zack appears to believe that it would be better if we were governed by “our betters.”   Before one examines that belief, it should be remembered that the Constitution leaves it to the states to set voting requirements and that not until the era of Andrew Jackson did most states open the polls to white males who didn’t own property or pay sufficiently high taxes.  Hence, as I see it, if my friend is right, then between 1789 and say 1830, few foolish or moronic things must have occurred in the government of the United States. 

Okay! Let’s see now:

In 1794, the President of the United States, a man named Washington, led a twenty-thousand-man army into western Pennsylvania to collect a federal excise tax on whiskey which poor western farmers rebelled at paying. (Could President Obama get away with such an act today?)

In1794, two Virginia aristocrats named Jefferson and Madison created a political party called Democratic-Republicans as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, a couple of other aristocrats, created the Federalist Party. This occurred despite President Washington’s advice against the creation of political parties.

In 1795, the Georgia legislature found it necessary to invalidate a huge scandal perpetrated by the previous legislature that sold huge tracks of land in the territory of Mississippi to political insiders at below market prices. It was called the Yazoo land scandal.  The state would ask the federal government to intervene in 1802, which it did, in exchange for the state dropping all claim to any land west of its modern border. (Note: No state's rights advocate objected to the feds agreement to absorb all liabilities by the State of Georgia in the 1802 settlement.)

In 1798, the Federalist Congress, loaded with the “better born,” passed the Alien and Sedition Acts restricting freedom of speech and freedom of the press until 1802.

In 1804, two of the most highly educated men in the country, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, engaged in a duel fatal to Hamilton.

In 1804, President Jefferson, a sometimes thin-skinned aristocrat, attempted to impeach Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, a signer of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, for casual but critical remarks about Jeffersonian Democrats which he’d made from the bench.

In 1812, a Congress full of property owners declared a war against Great Britain which it couldn’t possibly win and didn’t, really.

Near the end of 1814, just before the War of 1812 was settled at Ghent, a group of New England Federalist "better borns" called the Hartford Convention to consider seceding from the Union because the war was ruining New England commerce. (Note that this was about 46 years before Fort Sumter.) Finally, in 1819, American bankers and real-estate speculators combined to create the first economic panic or depression in American history.

Of course, this same generation of leaders did a lot of miraculous things, too.

In 1776-81, they broke away from Great Britain and created a republic.

In 1786, they turned down a proposal by either Nathaniel Gorham, President of the Congress, or Friederich Von Steuben (who’d served under Washington during the Revolutionary War) or perhaps Alexander Hamilton to make Prince Henry of Prussia (younger brother of Frederick the Great of Prussia) the first president or possibly king of the United States.

In 1787, 1788 and 1789, they established our federal system of government with its checks and balances.

In the 1790s, they created a currency and a strategy that paid off a huge debt to European nations after the Revolution.

In the early 1800s, they purchased Louisiana, provided capital for public and higher education, railroad and steamboat construction, and built the Erie and other canals vital to the growth of commerce. 

My point is that “the great unwashed” have no monopoly on foolishness or downright narcissism, as H. L. Mencken seemed to insist.

As I’ve written in these pages on countless occasions, I’m merely a student of history. I'm definitely not an historian, as I have no academic standing.  However, I’ve read about some thousand years of British and European history and nearly 500 years of American history and I’ve yet to read of a happy and successful society established and maintained by the best born and the best educated.

Of course, men and women of all ideologies possess and even maintain misgivings about our future.  The very intensity of their skepticism, as I see it, provides a sense of outraged righteousness.  We live amidst mountains of legitimately daunting fears of Radical Islam, federal regulation, changing trends in religion, a valueless currency, global warming, unemployment and even more.  Of course, our security matters to me, to my friend Zack and all those to the right and to the left of us.

I suppose I should be ashamed, but the truth is I’m not.  I think it simply makes good sense to let all of my ideologically certain friends, who are invariably stuffed with “gotcha” debating and talking points, to do my worrying for me.  Meanwhile, I’ll simply luxuriate in Fortress America!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY