What Would the Founders Do?

A debate debacle, an uncertain future and a classical course correction...

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

~ Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...

Oh, dear... 

It’s just 127 days until our American family and friends head to the polls to “hate-vote” their way through the 2024 presidential election... and the Republic appears to be in desperate need of a reboot. Sensible citizens, Franklin’s words dancing in their heads, must be beginning to wonder:

“Can we keep it, after all?”

Their fears and concerns are not unwarranted. In a world of shifting geopolitical quicksands, of looming debt crises, drug and crime epidemics, rising class warfare, and the very real threat of nuclear exchange...

...a nation turns its weary eyes to its would-be leaders. And woo-woo-woo, what does it find? One creature ham-fisted; the other spam-headed. (And Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away, hey, hey, hey...) 

On the American presidential ballot come November will appear two of the most despised men in the land. At least, that’s what voters themselves say. Half the nation wants one of the candidates behind bars. The other half wants his opponent in an aged-care facility, a mental institution... or sharing a cell. 

According to Pew Research, the former and current White House residents are the “least-liked pair of major party presidential candidates in at least 3 decades.” 

In other words, you have to go back to the early ‘80s... to when Al Gore invented the Internet... to find two more widely disliked presidential hopefuls. That’s no small task, given that we’ve seen the rise and fall of Hillary Rodham Clinton during that time! 

Here’s the ugly graph, from Pew:

That unfavorable number is almost double what it was just four years ago. And to think, Pew’s latest research was conducted before Thursday night’s full frontal assault on decency, decorum and the English language. Ouchie!

According to the Center (emphasis ours):

• Slightly more than a third of Americans (36%) have a favorable view of Trump and an unfavorable opinion of Biden.

• Nearly as many (34%) have a favorable view of Biden and a negative one of Trump.

• 25% have unfavorable views of both candidates, while just 3% feel favorably toward both.

Indeed, for every American not named Kamala Harris, those numbers are positively atrocious. And yet, here we stand, like an onlooker atop the Francis Scott Key bridge, watching the incoming barge in helpless horror. 

Yes, dear reader, the world’s greatest living Republic stands in need... but not of more politicos, lobbyists, party apparatchiks, monomedia lapdogs, deep state operatives, alphabet people activists, Nobel prize-winning “economists”, surveillance stooges, “defense” contractors, national health “experts” and the rest of the assheads and dalcops from Central Planning. 

Of that vile blob, the good citizens of the United States of America have had more than their fill, and then some. What the free world needs, in order to form a more perfect union, is to go back to the past. Herewith, a modest proposal...

The Founders’ Foundation

It was by no act of blind serendipity that the Founding Fathers happened upon the kind of government they set down in those original documents, almost two and a half centuries ago. Rather, their noble ideas and ideals, filtered by the passage of time, came from the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome, about which they were exceedingly well-versed. 

By the time Thomas Jefferson began his studies at the College of William and Mary, for example, he had in his sails already a high command of Greek, Latin and French and a comfortable fluency in the classical texts. 

Likewise was Alexander Hamilton proficient in these ancient languages, in which he could read and translate the works of Horace, Virgil, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Herodotus, Plato and Thucydides, among others.

And when John Adams and John Hancock became Harvard men, admission required fluent reading of Cicero and ease in Latin and Greek. 

Thus were the Founding Fathers equipped to argue and debate the finer points of the Republic they envisioned during the Constitutional Convention of 1787, out of which emerged the Constitution of the United States of America.

But it wasn’t just knowing ‘dead’ languages. As Eleanor Stratton writes for US Constitution.net:

The classical education of the Founding Fathers was not merely ornamental. It fueled their values and actions profoundly, molding American ideals fundamentally. The lessons from classical texts were crucial in shaping the new Republic, providing understanding of both the complex and practical elements of governance.

Now, we are not so naive as to think that either of the present candidates will soon be reciting Pericles funeral oration at veteran’s halls... or warning of the empirical pitfalls of Thucydides’s trap... or championing Epicurus’s ideas on happiness and human flourishing, so important to men like Mr. Jefferson. 

But that doesn’t mean it’s too late for “we, the people” to familiarize ourselves with the subjects that were on the Founders’ minds at the time they set about establishing the Republic we find under threat today. 

“An informed citizen is the only true repository of the public will,” as Jefferson had it, elsewhere adding:

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.” 

That sentiment in mind, a younger version of your editor set out a decade or so ago to present just such a classical notion. In cooperation with Dear Wife, who had at the time founded Classical Wisdom with our mutual friend Bill Bonner, we put together The Essential Greeks video course. 

A series in ten parts, the Essential Greeks video course covers everything from Homer to Aristotle, Socrates to Sophocles, Herodotus to Thucydides and plenty more besides. 

So whether it’s the philosophers or the historians, the politicians or the playwrights, the Essential Greeks gives you a foundational understanding of the classical world that was so central to the Founding Fathers’ vision for America. 

Perhaps now, more than at any time since its inspired beginnings, it is worth reflecting on exactly what’s at stake:

“A Republic,” said Franklin, “if you can keep it.” 

The Essential Greeks video course begins tomorrow. If you would like to join us for the Live Webinar, make sure to register right away.

Learn more here:

We’ll be back next week with more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joe Bowman

P.S. If you can’t make it tomorrow for the Live Welcome, don’t worry! Classical Wisdom will be hosting the entire ten-part video course for everyone who signs up, so you can review the Essential Greeks at your own pace. Details Here: