The title of this diary comes from the title of an essay in the NYTimes Sunday Book Review in 2006. It struck me as a particularly sweet and melancholy experience. The essay refers to a book that Adams wrote in 1790 titled Discourses on Davila. In turn, I found that work referenced in an essay from Mother Jones by James J Ellis which was adapted from his new book American Dialogue.
That’s the thing that I’m trying to get to after all of that zigging and zagging through my cerebral cortex. Buckle up when you hop on one of my trains of thought. Anyway. Adams’ life post presidency is kind of interesting to me. So I’m going to write about it.
— via Mother Jones
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In the wake of the GOP Tax Bill, that is coming down to the moments of realizing just what the bill for each citizen would be, it is a good idea to revisit one of the vital competitions of the American Revolution. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were diametrically opposed on what the new nation should look like. Together, they produced a lifetime of work via correspondence long after their presidencies ended.
from 1812 to 1826. Adams set the agenda when he wrote, “You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other.” This was a warning that the ever-combustible Adams would be poised for eruption whenever Jefferson touched on a sensitive subject.
One such trigger point was Jefferson’s deployment of the loaded term aristoi—Greek for “the best”—which set off a spirited dialogue between the two men on the tensions between equality and aristocracy as it applied to the revolutionary generation. “Every one,” Jefferson noted in one letter, “takes his side in favor of the many or the few.”
“Precisely,” Adams returned. The clash between “the few and the many” was “as old as Aristotle.” But then he went on to complicate Aristotle’s categories. Adams’ chief heresy was his direct refutation of Jefferson’s most famous words, that “all men are created equal.” Perhaps in some lofty humanistic sense this was true, Adams wrote, but “Inequalities of Mind and Body are so established by God Almighty in the constitution of Human Nature that no Art or policy can ever plain them down to a level.” Aristocracies, he therefore insisted, were an inevitable and permanent fixture in all human societies—including the young republic he and Jefferson had helped into being.
Talking to books is an awesome thing. Books are amazing because they let you have a conversation with an invisible person. Can you imagine having that conversation with an invisible person that just so happens to be a younger version of yourself? And then you have to add the fact that that younger version of yourself was also founding and running a new nation.
Adams was unconvinced. “No Romance could be more amusing,” he replied, than the belief that the United States would prove an exception to the dominant pattern of economic inequality throughout history. “As long as Property exists,” he observed, “it will accumulate in Individuals and Families…the Snow ball will grow as it rolls.”
Even philosophers, when marrying off their children, Adams chided, “prefer the rich and handsome and the well descended to the wise and the good.” There were “five Pillars of Aristocracy,” he concluded, “Beauty, Wealth, Birth, Genius, and Virtues. Any one of the three first can, at any time, overbear any one or both of the two last.”
And here’s what the Federalist answer was to the problem of capitalists and wealthy interests, make the banks public. It makes a lot of sense and isn’t actually all that far from Hamilton’s goals, save his goal to make it easier to accumulate wealth. Other than that, and Adams’ disdain for Hamilton’s lineage, the two men were in lock step along party lines.
Adams envisions a still relevant and existent part of US politics, the Progressive movement. The movement existed in response to the Gilded Age and the Depression. Thanks to the New Deal, Progressives planted the seeds of prosperity across the country. Of course the GOP made it their sine qua non to pillage those seeds for oligarchic gain.
Adams wanted to turn banks into public institutions and place them under the control of Congress. There should “be one Bank in the United States, and that a National Bank with a branch in each state,” he wrote.
“This ought to have been a fundamental Article in the Constitution.” Adams’ views, which anticipated the Federal Reserve Board and the banking regulations of the New Deal, were all in keeping with his conviction that the new aristocracy could not be killed, so it must be controlled.
The Struggle Continues
btw, anyone reading the new Indivisible guide?
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