The Ripon Society

Before America250, there was America200. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Historian Christopher Capozzola explores how Nixon's vision for the Bicentennial became America's celebration in the latest Ripon Forum:

When Bicentennial planning had begun a few years earlier, President Richard Nixon declared he wanted a big party, and he intended to preside over it. Maybe a World’s Fair? But by the mid-1970s, the mood in the country seemed to suggest that patriotism had gone out of fashion along with coonskin caps and whitewall tires. After the oil shocks of 1973, Nixon’s resignation in 1974, America’s withdrawal from South Vietnam in the spring of 1975, and an ongoing urban crisis that brought New York City to the verge of bankruptcy that fall, Americans began to speak of an “Age of Limits.” In his 1975 State of the Union address, President Gerald Ford admitted that, “I must say to you that the state of our Union is not good.” Maybe a World’s Fair didn’t make sense. And Congress never delivered the money Nixon had requested. America’s Bicentennial would take a different path.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/what-we-saw-at-the-bicentennial/

TEDDY TWEET OF THE WEEK

“After all the very highest and most fundamental work of good citizenship is to leave the next generation in right shape.”

Theodore Roosevelt
Letter to Charles J. Frisch
July 24, 1911

Flawed men. Enduring principles. As America marks 250 years, historian Dory Wiley explores what the Founders' example — their compromises, their contradictions, and their commitment to something larger than themselves — can still teach us today in the latest Ripon Forum:

Two hundred and fifty years ago, 56 men signed their names to a document that changed the world. They were not demigods. They were lawyers and merchants, farmers and physicians — men of ambition, vanity, and occasional pettiness. They argued bitterly, compromised reluctantly, and held contradictions that history has not let them escape.

And yet they produced the most successful experiment in self-government in the history of civilization. Not because they were perfect, but because they were not — and they succeeded anyway. As America marks its 250th anniversary, the leadership lessons they left behind are not a sentimental exercise. They are an urgent one.

On Compromise: Why It Worked Then — and Why It Is So Hard Now
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 was 89 sweltering days in Philadelphia during which the whole enterprise nearly collapsed. What made compromise possible is something we have largely stopped talking about: the Founders shared a common floor. Not identical beliefs — but a set of convictions that were simply not on the table. It is far easier to bargain on structure when you agree on the foundation beneath it.

Those convictions cut across their theological and political differences. Rights come from the Creator, not the state — a government that claims to give rights can just as easily take them away. Governmental tyranny is the permanent threat, and the entire architecture of the Constitution — separation of powers, checks and balances, the Bill of Rights — exists to prevent it. Those who hold office are accountable to a moral code above their own preferences; Washington’s Farewell Address warned that national morality cannot prevail without religious principle. And government itself answers to something higher than popular will — the Declaration appeals not only to the consent of the governed but to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Office was not a prize. It was a stewardship.

Today, many of these foundations are themselves the subject of our political combat. When the floor is disputed, there is nothing left to stand on together. The Founders could bargain fiercely because they agreed on what was not negotiable. We have forgotten what that feels like.

On Virtue and Freedom: Franklin’s Argument

At the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin called for prayer and humility, asking his colleagues: “Have we now forgotten that powerful friend?” Franklin had identified the deepest requirement of free government: that it rests on something beyond itself. The Founders agreed, across their considerable differences, that self-government required a virtuous citizenry. Freedom and virtue were not in tension. Freedom required virtue to survive.

Practical Politicians: Flawed Men Who Served Something Larger

There is a temptation at moments like this one to bronze the Founders — to lift them beyond criticism or emulation alike. This is a disservice to them and to us. Adams was vain and difficult. Jefferson was deeply contradictory. Hamilton was brilliant and reckless. Washington was a man of fierce pride who had to learn, slowly, to subordinate that pride to the public good.

READ MORE: https://riponsociety.org/article/flawed-men-enduring-principles/