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Real Patriots Ask Questions
pleased, but with two reservations. One deficiency: no limit was
provided on the number of terms the President could serve. This,
Jefferson feared, was a way for a President to become a king, in fact
if not in law. The other major deficiency was the absence of a bill of
rights. The citizen, the average person, was insufficiently protected,
Jefferson thought, from the inevitable abuses of those in power.
He advocated freedom of speech, in part so that even wildly
unpopular views could be expressed, so that deviations from the
conventional wisdom could be offered for consideration. Personally
he was an extremely amiable man, reluctant to criticize even his
sworn enemies. He displayed a bust of his arch-adversary Alexander
Hamilton in the vestibule at Monticello. Nevertheless, he believed
that the habit of scepticism is an essential prerequisite for responsible
citizenship. He argued that the cost of education is trivial compared
to the cost of ignorance, of leaving the government to the wolves. He
taught that the country is safe only when the people rule.
Part of the duty of citizenship is not to be intimidated into
conformity. I wish that the oath of citizenship taken by recent
immigrants, and the pledge that students routinely recite,
included something like 'I promise to question everything my
leaders tell me'. That would be really to Thomas Jefferson's point.
'I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my
independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can
make my own judgements.'
I also wish that the Pledge of Allegiance were directed at the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as it is when the President
takes his oath of office, rather than to the flag and the nation.
When we consider the founders of our nation - Jefferson,
Washington, Samuel and John Adams, Madison and Monroe,
Benjamin Franklin, Tom Paine and many others - we have before
us a list of at least ten and maybe even dozens of great political
leaders. They were well educated. Products of the European
Enlightenment, they were students of history. They knew human
fallibility and weakness and corruptibility. They were fluent in the
English language. They wrote their own speeches. They were
realistic and practical, and at the same time motivated by high
principles. They were not checking the pollsters on what to think
this week. They knew what to think. They were comfortable with
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