Every fall semester, as I did again last week, I have the privilege of showing my students episode 2 in HBO’s marvelous dramatization of the life of John Adams. Episode 2 covers the debate in the Continental Congress over declaring independence from Great Britain.
The arguments in Congress are fronted by two men. John Dickinson, a Quaker from Philadelphia, refuses to vote away the blood of his countrymen. He is willing to sacrifice his reputation in order to keep trying for peace with Britain. I hope my students find him admirable.
John Adams leads the fight for independence. He has a vision worthy of a Genesis creation, a new nation which will be about the interests of ordinary people, the first such nation in the history of the world. He is willing to die for that vision.
I always remind my students that we read history knowing the end from the beginning. We know the colonists won. We know history records them as the “good guys.” The heroes. But the folks living through it knew no such thing. To defeat the greatest army and navy on earth was a ludicrous notion. Swinging from the yardarm of a British Man of War was a more likely outcome for each of them.
Yet Adams saw hope! He was willing to stake “all that he had,” willing to pay a “great expense of blood” to create for “both the born and unborn” a nation “of laws, not of men.” A nation where all would stand equal before the law, from the poor to the rich, from those born on the streets to those born in gilded palaces with gilded escalators, no privilege before the law based on where you were born.
Watching that episode last week, I was struck anew by how far we have fallen from those ideals. Half of the descendants of the founders will eagerly hand the country created by men like John Adams and John Dickinson over to Donald Trump, a man who has promised to use the power of government to seek revenge on those he hates, a man who has no interest in a nation of laws. He craves not a nation of laws, not even a nation of men, but a nation for a man. One man. A nation to serve his interests, and his interests alone.
If there is hope, it lies in the fact that, so far, the nation of laws has held. Where so much has failed, from the leadership of one of our political parties, to the souls of half the nation, where so much has been corrupted, the law has still won. Hundreds of insurrectionists are in jail. The law has won. Fox News, perhaps the greatest instrument of corruption the nation has known, has been revealed by the law to be an organization which willfully lies to its audience, an organization utterly corrupt in its pursuit of wealth. The law has won. Trump himself has already been convicted of rape and massive business fraud. With more convictions to come. The law has won. And when he eventually is escorted to his own jail cell,
Adams’ vision of a nation of laws, not of men, will have been vindicated.
And yes, if Senator Menendez goes to jail, if Hunter Biden goes to jail, if Eric Adams goes to jail, we who honor the vision of the founders will respect the process. We are a nation of laws, not of men.