SPEAKING FREELY A post-9/11 view of John Adams
By Dallas Darling
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
"Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be the first... But the safety of the people of America against dangers from foreign force depends not only upon their forbearing to give just causes of war to other nations, but also on their placing and continuing themselves in such a situation as not to invite hostility and insult."
- President John Adams [1]
Today when you ask Americans about John Adams, their nation's
second president, most associate him with either having a pompous attitude or mistake him with the Samuel Adams beer. And yet this complex, scholarly and highly learned individual was the first one to apply the term "revolution" to the America's independence, making it more actual, place specific, and the result of human initiative. [2] (Up until then, it denoted the rotation of planets or past events of change driven by impersonal forces doing the work of God.)
In defending British soldiers who fired upon and killed several colonists in the infamous Boston Massacre, he admirably displayed his impartiality showing that laws applied equally to all. He was also the first to recognize St Domingo's slave revolt and independence under Toussaint L'Ouverture, "wanting to preserve the most perfect harmony and the most friendly intercourse" with the Caribbean island.
By the time John Adams was inaugurated, the new American republic was being subject to the whims of European powers and their trans-Atlantic Wars. Britain still maintained garrisons in the Ohio Valley. To pay off its war debts, America was still dependent on foreign commerce. Because of its war with France, the British decided to undercut American claims to neutral trading rights by "impressing" American seamen and forcing them to serve on British ships.
The blockage of trade with Britain caused deep political divisions based on attitudes toward the French Revolution. The Democrats and Republicans wanted to utterly drive Britain out of North America, including Canada, and Spain out of Florida. When American envoys were bribed by the French, the High-Federalists wanted John Adams to declare war. To John Adams dismay, the XYZ Affair led to a short undeclared naval war between America and France, or Quasi-War.
Although the war between Britain and France threatened to engulf America, John Adams worked diligently towards a peaceful settlement. Like his predecessor, he sought to avoid foreign entanglements and recognized the inherent dangers of political parties becoming to powerful or extreme.
It was during this time that he signed a poorly drafted Federalist-controlled piece of legislation known as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. It gave the president special powers to deport dangerous foreigners and suppress critical speech. John Adams used it to quell "war hawks" among both political factions that were tearing the new republic apart.
In the midst of this domestic and foreign turmoil, however, he was determined to keep America out of war, which he did. Most Americans were relieved when the resulting Convention of 1800 with France ended the conflict at sea and resolved many other outstanding issues between the two nations. Peace returned.
Unlike current political and military leaders, John Adams did not share a war euphoria. His spatial knowledge of the world, with its vast uncharted territories and peoples, had not yet been dominated by a rigid nation-state view. The nation-state itself enforced by a three-fold division-government, army and people - was still evolving. Due to agricultural-based societies, political power still remained locally.
Since communal survival was utmost, as were peoples cultures and values, national defense was a limited concept with very little state interference. Still, digitized professional war-making entities had not yet divided the world's map into rigid boundaries and even smaller grids, making it appear that it could be controlled and dominated. The American Revolution taught John Adams about overlapping sediments of local power bases, and how they were in a state of flux and not very well defined. His was a world of constant migratory and ideological change.
Since democracies do not always make societies more civil - but merely expose its health (good or bad) - John Adams understood the importance of safety, and how safety from foreign forces depended on giving "just causes" before committing to war.
Modern America has failed both. Today an ambivalent mood permits fear of war to exist side by side with an exalted state of belligerency, and with a high degree of profitability in war preparations. With 6,000 domestic and 1,000 foreign military and naval bases across the globe, a militarized economy provides easy niches for tens of thousands of bureaucrats in and out of military uniform.
Just as many scientists, engineers and academia are hired to find that final "technological" breakthrough which can provide ultimate security. With corporate contractors unwilling to give up their war profits, and warrior intellectuals who sell threats while presidents bless wars, frivolous reasons abound for going to war.
John Adams also recognized the dangers of placing citizens in situations that invites hostility and insult. This perpetual war footing invites hostilities and insults and places all Americans, both foreign and domestic, in harms way. There is now one party that transcends and dominates a two-party system: the War Party. It sustains itself by initiating and maintaining foreign entanglements.
Because of this, foreign states are ravaged, their refugee immigrants then impressed into military service. The War Party and their minions bribe other nations and peoples with military weaponry. Those who refuse to submit are punished with blockades or real wars (unlike quasi ones in which most Americans believe). An Alien Sedition Act no longer tries to silence warmongers, but instead reprimands and purges those wanting to avoid more preemptive wars and lengthy military occupations. American democracy is sick with war and suffers from militarism.
John Adam's search for national security through peaceful neutrality, and ending partisan strife caused by war-minded factions and their rush to war, has sadly been forgotten. Although he considered the idea of separating from England as "new, strange, and terrible Doctrines," he embraced them, pleased that it meant that the "People" were "the Source of all Authority and Original of all Power." [3]
He also believed the American Revolution afforded a remarkable opportunity for a people "to erect that whole building with their own hands". As a result of neglecting his dire warnings, on September 11, 2001 several key buildings were destroyed and many Americans killed. Unfortunately, many more are still in harms way.
Notes:
1. Paret, Peter. Makers of Modern Strategy: from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, pg 869, 870.
2. Bender, Thomas. A Nation Among Nations. New York, New York: Hill and Wang Publishers, 2006, pg 94.
3. Ibid, pg 98.
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say.Please click hereif you are interested in contributing. Articles submitted for this section allow our readers to express their opinions and do not necessarily meet the same editorial standards of Asia Times Online's regular contributors.
Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John's Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com.
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