History

Mark Gilroy July 1, 2009

John Adams on America, Democracy, Morality, and More

John Adams brilliant insights on America, democracy, morality, and a wide range of issues and ideas deserve more attention than this almost forgotten – and recently rediscovered – Founding Father has sometimes received.

Our first vice president and second president was John Adams, who stepped out of the shadows of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and other Founding Fathers in the modern consciousness with the surprise bestselling biography by David McCullough and the HBO miniseries based on it.

Here are just a few quotes from the Massachusetts school teacher, lawyer, and politician – who went to Harvard to study for the ministry at his father’s encouragement – and the father of a political dynasty, including his son, John Quincy Adams, the 6th President of the United States. But just a warning. Of all the Founding Fathers, perhaps none was more of a curmudgeon than Adams.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

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.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

Be not intimidated… nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

Mark Gilroy April 27, 2009

The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan

The Man Who Would Be King by Ben Macentire

The American Who Became King of Afghanistan

I loved the Michael Caine and Sean Connery movie, The Man Who Would Be King, which came out when I was in high school. The John Huston film was nominated for four Academy Awards. Christopher Plummer played the role of a young journalist by the name of Rudyard Kipling – and the film was based on the Kipling’s short story by the same name.

But who knew that Kipling’s literary bon mot was inspired by a true story – and that truth truly is stranger than fiction?

In 1989, Ben Macintyre was sent to Afghanistan to cover the final stages of the 10 year war between the Soviets and the CIA-backed Mujahideen guerrillas. While there he read Kipling’s tale of Daniel Dravot (written in 1888 but looking back to the middle of the Victorian Age, the 1820s and 30s), who made it to the heart of Afghanistan disguised as a Muslim holy man to become king of a fierce tribal empire. It was several years later, while combing through stacks of books in the British Library that Macintyre first discovered the name of a man who “reputedly inspired Rudyard Kipling’s story, ‘The Man Who Would Be King.'”

So began Macintyre’s search for an elusive footnote in history – all his papers were assumed to have been destroyed in a house fire in 1929 – that culminated in The Man Who Would Be King, a fascinating slice of history that is relevant to today’s most pressing geopolitical hotspot. Following clues that led him from Britain’s war archives to the Punjab, San Francisco, and Pennsylvania, Macintyre was finally able to find a box hidden away in the basement of the archives in a tiny U.S. museum of this mysterious man’s birthplace. At the bottom of the box was a “document, written in Persian and stamped with an intricately beautiful oval seal: a treaty, 170 years old, forged between an Afghan prince and the man who would be king.”

The first American in Afghanistan had many titles: Prince of Ghor, Paramount Chief of the Hazarajat, Lord of Kurram, personal surgeon to Maharaja Ranjit Singh of the Five Rivers, King of Afghanistan … and many others. His highness Halan Sahib – who in 1839, enthroned on a bull elephant, raised his standard and made claim to the Hindu Kush – was known back home in Chester County, Pennsylvania, as Josiah Harlan. The man who followed Alexander the Great’s winding mountain path 21 centuries later and led an army made up of Afghan Pathans, Persian Qizilibash, Hindus, Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Hazaras who were descendents of the Mongolian Hordes, a pacifist Quaker of Chester County, Pennsylvania.

If you like history, biographies, and tales that seem too fanciful to be true, you’ll love The Man Would Be King.

Mark Gilroy March 9, 2009

The State of Democracy in America – and the Ultimate Bribe

How is democracy in America doing?

In 1831 Alexander de Tocqueville was sent by the French government to study the American prison system. In typical French fashion, he took a couple wrong turns to enjoy his coffee at outdoor cafes, so when he returned to France in 1832, he provided a much wider view of the then fledgling country through his book, Democracy in America. Below are a few select quotes that continue to resonate today – including his wry observation on democracy and the ultimate bribe!

America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.