De Montesquieu, John Adams and The American Presidency - Part I
Genius and Demagogues
Unlike Jefferson, John Adams summarily and cryptically rejected the ideas of the French Enlightenment. American economic development he foresaw, would proceed along the thoughts of Adam Smith and David Hume. Economics and U.S. government would evolve along the lines of British and Scotsmen, not Frenchmen. At the same time, Adams cautioned that just as emotions ruled markets, emotions ruled politics, not reason. His greatest fear was that Democracy would turn into a continual campaign, accomplishing nothing of the “public good” in the process. Democracy would turn into demagoguery.
De Montesquieu held in The Spirit of the Laws, that the genius of Democracy is a balance of the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.
There is no such balance in the demagoguery of America today.
Presidents, Eloquence and Truth
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Mueller Report:
