How The Founding Fathers Would See This July 4th
By Mathilda Ferguson
The Founding Fathers Adams, Livingston, Sherman, Jefferson, and Franklin present their draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia on June 28, 1776 - Painting by John Trumbull's (1818)
How The Founding Fathers Would See This July 4th
An Analysis:
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On this Fourth of July, as rockets burst against the American night, casting brilliance over a land deeply riven, one cannot help but wonder: what shadows would fall across the faces of those men gathered in Philadelphia, could they witness the spectacle of Donald Trump’s presidency and the obeisance of his Congressional adherents?
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I. Philosophical & Moral Bedrock Crumbling
The Founders, steeped in Enlightenment rigor and haunted by history’s tyrants, erected a system predicated on the fragility of virtue and the corruptibility of power. Franklin’s "republic, if you can keep it" was not a boast, but a stark warning. To witness President Trump’s relentless assault on truth itself – the very foundation of Locke’s social contract and Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness – would strike them as a philosophical apocalypse. His casual mendacity, his demonization of the free press (that Fourth Estate they implicitly relied upon, even while sparring with it), and his cultivation of alternative realities would appear not merely as flaws, but as the deliberate demolition of the rational discourse essential for self-governance. Morally, the spectacle of boundless self-aggrandizement, the cruel mockery of adversaries, the transactional view of loyalty and human worth – these would violate the classical republican ideal of virtus (public virtue) they aspired to, however imperfectly. The sycophancy of his Congressional supporters, placing fealty to one man above fealty to the Constitution, would embody the very "baneful effects of the spirit of party" Washington so fervently warned against in his Farewell Address – a spirit that "agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms" and opens "the door to foreign influence and corruption."
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II. Political & Constitutional Desecration
The architecture of Madison’s carefully calibrated checks and balances would appear grotesquely deformed. Hamilton, champion of energetic executive power within the law, would recoil at its exercise above the law. Trump’s attempts to weaponize the Justice Department, pressure election officials, obstruct Congress with blanket impunity, and incite mobs against the Capitol itself – these are not policy disputes; they are the very definition of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" the impeachment power was designed to address. The sight of a Congress, particularly a co-equal Senate, abdicating its constitutional duty to check executive overreach, instead becoming a chorus of amplification and excuse, would confirm Madison’s darkest fears in Federalist 51: "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition." When ambition instead embraces servility, the structure collapses. The Founders feared the demagogue who would "throw affairs into confusion that he may 'ride the storm and direct the whirlwind,'" as Hamilton wrote.
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III. Sociological & Psychological Fractures
The deep polarization, the tribal loyalty overriding evidence and reason among Trump’s base, would be a terrifying manifestation of the factions Madison analyzed. Yet, the intensity of the devotion, the willing suspension of disbelief, the embrace of conspiracy as gospel – this might surpass their models. They understood human passion and prejudice, but the psychological mechanisms of mass persuasion via constant grievance, victimhood narratives, and social media amplification would be alien and horrifying. The sociological rupture – families sundered, communities polarized into armed camps, trust in fellow citizens eroded – would represent the failure of the "more perfect Union" they sought, devolving into the very state of factional warfare they designed the Republic to transcend.
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IV. Economic & Financial Distortion
While Hamilton favored strong national finance, the Founders broadly distrusted concentrated, unaccountable power, whether political or economic. Trump’s blurring of personal, corporate, and state interests – the emoluments clause violations, the policy decisions seemingly tailored to personal profit or the enrichment of cronies – would epitomize the corrupting influence of wealth on republican virtue they dreaded. The elevation of transactional self-interest above the commonwealth would strike Adams and Jefferson alike as a betrayal of the public trust. The spectacle of a presidency leveraged for personal brand enhancement and financial gain would be anathema.
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V. Geopolitical & Historical Irony
The Founders fought a revolution against a monarch perceived as arbitrary and unaccountable. To see an American president mimic autocratic strongmen – praising Putin, Orban, Kim; undermining alliances painstakingly built over generations; withdrawing from the world stage only to bark erratic demands – would be a bitter historical irony. Franklin and Adams, skilled diplomats who understood the power of principle and consistency, would see a nation squandering its moral authority and strategic position, playing into the hands of adversaries the Founders instinctively distrusted. The erosion of democratic norms globally, abetted by an American president’s admiration for autocrats, would be seen as a profound abdication of the revolutionary legacy.
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VI. Legal & Ethical Abyss
The relentless assault on the rule of law – attacking judges, prosecutors, the FBI, the electoral process itself – would be the ultimate desecration. The Founders enshrined due process, an independent judiciary, and the peaceful transfer of power as sacred bulwarks against tyranny. Trump’s attempts to undermine these pillars, aided by legal acolytes twisting the law into a shield for lawlessness, would appear as the very tyranny in embryonic form they sacrificed to prevent. Ethically, the consistent pattern of cruelty (family separation), norm-shattering (inciting violence), and the utter lack of contrition would violate their Enlightenment belief in reason and human dignity, however inconsistently applied in their own time.
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VII. Prospective Dread
On this anniversary of independence, the Founders would look not backward with celebration, but forward with profound dread. They would see the fragility of their experiment laid bare. The "candle of liberty" Jefferson spoke of, which must be "constantly guarded," appears not merely flickering, but actively smothered by the breath of one man and the willing hands of his enablers. They would recognize the patterns: the consolidation of power, the erosion of institutions, the manipulation of popular sentiment, the silencing of dissent. They would know, in their bones, where this path has led countless republics before.
The Founders would perceive this not merely as political failure, but as a human tragedy. They would see the yearning for simple answers exploited, the fears of a changing world manipulated into hatred, the hard-won fabric of trust and shared reality torn asunder. They would mourn the loss of that delicate, hard-won thing: a shared belief in the idea of America, grounded in laws, not men. Their grief would be profound, lyrical in its sorrow – the sorrow of architects watching their masterpiece, built to endure the ages, being willfully dismantled brick by brick, while the crowd cheers the wrecking ball. The "self-evident truths" of July 4th, 1776, would feel distant indeed, obscured by the smoke of division and the shadow of an autocratic impulse they believed they had forever exiled from their shores.
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Conclusion
This July 4th, the fireworks illuminate not just the sky, but the stark, uncomfortable truth: the Republic endures only through the constant, vigilant, and courageous recommitment of its citizens to the principles those flawed, brilliant men inscribed. Trump and his enablers represent the antithesis of that commitment. The Founders would see in them the very threat their life's work was dedicated to defeating.
Yet, despair is not the final word they would utter. For woven into the very fabric of their creation, stitched with threads both coarse and golden, was a profound, almost obstinate, faith in the long arc of the people they dared to empower. They knew revolutions are not singular events, but continuous reckonings. They had witnessed the near-shattering of their own fragile union – the Whiskey Rebellion’s embers still warm, the specter of disunion already whispering in the corridors of power. They understood strife as the soil from which resilience, however painfully, can grow.
Beyond the glare of the demagogue and the obsequious chorus, there are deeper currents of this vast, contradictory land. Countless hands are still tending the flame of our Republic:
The Mayors & Governers
Upholding faithfully and tirelessly the principles and values of our Republic. Thereby setting an important example for the nation and its citizens.
The Teachers & Librarians
In classrooms and in libraries humming with a hundred tongues, patiently explaining Madison’s checks, Jefferson’s words, the searing cost of Appomattox, planting seeds of civic duty in minds yet unjaded.
The Journalists
Not the shouters, but the diggers, the verifiers, working through the night, upholding that battered, essential ideal: sunlight as disinfectant, truth as the bedrock of consent.
The Local Organizers
In church basements and union halls, registering voters block by stubborn block, reminding neighbors that power resides not in a single will, but in the collective, organized voice of the community.
The Judges
Most still striving, despite immense pressure, to interpret law, not loyalty, upholding the slow, meticulous machinery of justice against the gale of impunity.
The Veterans
Who swore oaths not to a man, but to a document, and who, in quiet corners and public squares, speak of service that transcends partisanship.
The Citizens
Who show up at town halls, write letters (real letters!), run for school board, serve on juries, and yes, stand in long lines to cast a ballot – the fundamental, defiant act of faith in self-governance.
This is the resilience the Founders counted on, even if they couldn't always see it clearly in their own time. They knew the experiment was perilous. They knew the "mob" could be misled, passions inflamed. But they also believed in the capacity for collective learning, for correction born of crisis. They lived through the crucible of revolution and the fragile birth pangs of nationhood; they understood that progress is rarely linear, often purchased with pain.
Remember the darkness America has weathered and emerged from: The raw wound of Civil War, where brother slaughtered brother and the Union itself hung by a thread – yet endured, reforged. The bitter struggles for labor rights, where blood soaked factory floors – yet rights were won. The long, brutal march for Civil Rights, met with firehoses and hatred – yet laws changed, hearts (some) opened. The cynical corrosion of Watergate – yet the system, creaking and groaning, held the line. Each time, the Republic bent, sometimes nearly broke, but ultimately relied not on the perfection of its leaders, but on the awakened conscience and determined action of its people.
On this July 4th, the Founders would indeed grieve the assault on their core principles. But they would also recognize a familiar spirit stirring – not in the halls of compromised power, but in the streets, the courtrooms, the newsrooms, the classrooms, the town halls, the quiet kitchens where conversations about duty and democracy still happen. They would see Frederick Douglass’s fierce hope, born not of blindness, but of struggle: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress... Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
The epilogue is not yet written. The candle flickers, but the hands that shield it are legion. The parchment is worn, but the ink – the idea of liberty bound by law, of power derived from the people – remains indelible. The American story is one of perpetual striving, often falling short, sometimes descending into darkness, yet always finding, through the grit and grace of its people, a way to stumble back towards the light.
This July 4th is not an endpoint, but another stark milepost on that arduous, necessary journey.
The Founding Fathers’ legacy is not a monument to be polished, but a call – urgent, demanding, and ultimately hopeful – to pick up the tools of citizenship and build anew, as they did, from the fractured pieces of their own uncertain time.
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MADA ~ Make America Democratic Again… Happy 4th of July! ✨
