Can US Republic survive populism? - Joseph Ellis and the pessimistic wisdom of John Adams

A new populist wave is sweeping the Western world. It's fueled by the same combustible than others before: global economic crises and their discontents.

Historian Joseph Ellis has dedicated part of his notable career to explaining why our Founding Fathers didn't want a democracy in the mold of the French Revolution. Moreover, they saw the 20,000 killed on the name of the "people" under the Terror period as a stern warning for us, the stillborn Brittish colonies trying to become the United States.

Adams warned presciently against putting much hope on democracy per se:

“Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

Adams saw executive power and human condition as a menace for freedom and the nascent Republic:

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

– John Adams, Notes for an oration at Braintree, Spring 1772.

He believed on giving full power to the people, but thought people as individual citizens with individual rights, no majorities or mobs getting beyond the law nor governments and presidents reigning beyond it:

“The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.”– John Adams

Adams stood against the majority almost all his political life and particularly eloquently when he defended British soldiers charged with the Boston massacre in 1770:

“The law no passion can disturb. ‘Tis void of desire and fear, lust and anger. ‘Tis mens sine affectu, written reason, retaining some measure of the divine perfection. It does not enjoin that which pleases a weak, frail man, but, without any regard to persons, commands that which is good and punishes evil in all, whether rich or poor, high or low.” 

– John Adams, Argument in Defense of the British Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials, Dec. 4, 1770. 

Against the prevalent fashion of idolizing Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, Ellis leans towards the more clear judgement of his rival John Adams, our second president.

Adams never thought much of democracy, the "people" or the American people for that matter. He saw the country as a motley crew instead of an Ethnic nation as Europeans' republics were.

There was a revolutionary summer when all the rather practical ideas of the framers came together, in a lasting collision as our 1787 Constitution is. 

Unlike Madison -who thought the division of powers and states rigths would prevent the tyranny of any eventual majority-, Adams dreaded that the US Constitution and its institutions would not be enough to control people's lowest passions if excited by demagogues.

"Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

These days are putting Madison's controls and Adams' fears against each other. 

A recent article on the very Republican National Review argues from its title that "Our government was designed to protect us from the Trumps of the world". 

Demagogues and populists always test the limits of existing institutional restraints looking for ways to circumvent them. From Mussolini to Hugo Chavez, that has been a constant trait. 

Democracies, however, elect populists and demagogues now and then and set the stage for erosion of the rule of law and the republican checks and balances. 

Hopefully, Adams will be proven wrong once more. But that will not happen without a return to civility.

Lets leave the last word on this subject to Adams himself:

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation.”

    (Quoted from page 406 of The Political Writings of John Adams, Regnery Publishing, 2000.)