My ancestors trace their roots in America to before the days the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence.
You may have seen my distant cousin, Joseph Hewes, in the massive painting hanging in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol. It shows colonial leaders including Cousin Joe presenting the Continental Congress with that declaration of their discontent with King George III and British rule.
Hewes, a merchant, was 46 years old when he signed the most famous document in our nation’s history. In the eyes of the king, Hewes and the other signers were insurrectionists and instigators.
Because of this, Benjamin Franklin is credited with saying, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”
One goal of Cousin Joe and the other Founders in establishing the United States of America was to prevent a concentration of power in a monarch. They had experienced the unchecked authority of a king and wanted no more of it.
So, what would my rebellious ancestor and his compatriots from 1776 think about the course of human events in 21st century America? Would they speak or act against present-day government leaders who have divided and not united us?
The Founders felt strongly that people in all walks of life and all uniforms of dress should have the power to voice opinions about their government.
Cousin Joe would have been more open-minded than our current president when Olympic skier Hunter Hess told reporters in Italy last week, “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of. Wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”
Our president, who doesn’t see things the same way our Founders would, called Hess “a real loser” instead of embracing his freedom to speak.
The disconnect between our Founding Fathers and today’s president goes beyond rhetoric. It’s my hunch the current state of affairs in the nation they birthed would alarm our Founders.
Such as:
The president touts that his crackdown on immigrants resulted in the arrest of thousands of violent criminals. Yet data collected by the Cato Institute show only about 5 percent of those detained last year had a violent criminal conviction, while 70 percent had no criminal record. The detention by the king’s henchmen of law-abiding people in the 13 colonies was among the reasons the Founding Fathers gathered 250 years ago in Philadelphia and issued their “When in the course of human events” notice.
The president’s widespread use of tariffs — effectively a tax Americans pay on imported goods — is something Cousin Joe experienced. I don’t know whether he bought some of that famous Boston Tea Party brew, but we all remember the “taxation without representation” rallying cry by colonists wanting a voice in their government.
The Founders feared a leader who placed personal power and vanity above the nation’s good. By contrast, our president has hinted that term limits should not apply to him. Just last week, he demanded that New York City’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles International Airport be renamed for him in exchange for the lifting of a freeze he imposed on federal infrastructure money going for a new passenger railroad tunnel beneath the Hudson River between New Jersey and New York.
The president’s $10 billion personal lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over a government contractor’s leak of his income tax data is another of these “whose interests is he protecting” matters. Besides the breathtaking damages the lawsuit seeks, there is that cringeworthy aspect of the IRS and Justice Department officials who will defend or settle the lawsuit owing their jobs to the Plaintiff in Chief.
The president’s desire to have the federal government take control of elections in at least 15 states — locations that voted against him in the past — would raise the blood pressure of the Founders. It’s not a coincidence they wrote the Constitution’s election clause to vest the power to run in the states rather than federal incumbents.
The Founders might enjoy a private screening of movie producer Rob Reiner’s 1995 film, “The American President.”
They would applaud the civics lesson delivered by Michael J. Fox’s character, who raises his voice and delivers a pointed line about citizenship and accountability to the president, played by Michael Douglas.
It is a message that all Americans, including our real-life president, should reaffirm.
During a conversation in the Oval Office, Martin Sheen’s A.J. MacInerney tells Fox’s Lewis Rothschild, “The president doesn’t answer to you, Lewis!”
Fox’s character replies, “Oh, yes, he does. I’m a citizen, and in this country, it is not only permissible to question our leaders, it’s our responsibility.”
Cousin Joe has been there, done that.
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