M     Prof. Wood, we’re very pleased to have you on Voice of the Voters.

W     I’m pleased to be here.

M      Your books have always inspired me, and I just finished your latest, Revolutionary Characters--What Made the Founders Different.  I would like to start out with, what did make the Founders different?   

W     Well they were not only different from us, in fundamental ways, but they were different from one another as well, so as well, the title has a double meaning. But I think I’m most emphasizing the difference from us, they were not living in a democratic era, and they were separated from us in so many ways, that it’s hard to recover that very distant world.  It was not a democratic society as we understand it. Of course women didn’t vote, even a lot of adult white males didn’t vote at first because they didn’t have sufficient property, and because many of them were slave owners.

M      But you also talked about character as being important, both, I consider them after reading your book, a little bit of characters, but as having character. Would you say that is also an important virtue of the times?

W     Oh yes, they were very peculiar for historical reasons, obsessed with developing the character of the gentleman, which had a whole lot of connotations, which maybe we’ve lost mostly.  I mean we put the word gentleman on our restroom doors, so it doesn’t have quite the same meaning for us as it did for them.  But it was something they took very seriously, as it did for example, Jane Austin. And you can read Jane Austin’s novels, she is obsessed with what makes a great gentleman.  That’s the whole theme of Pride and Prejudice.  Because she wonders if Mr. Darcy is a real gentleman in Elizabeth Barrett’s eyes, and so this is not something peculiar to North Americans, it was also something that the English could do well, and in general were preoccupied with.  And it could, what I suppose could sum up today, is a liberal arts education.  You are supposed to be cosmopolitan, and supposed to be free of bigotry and prejudice, and those were the kinds of characteristics they were talking about. 

M      Well did you talked about, and it’s interesting that we have such a rush today, where people don’t even know their neighbors, almost.  And you talk about the importance of politeness and virtue, and that they saw it as people ought to relate to one another in a kinder and gentler way, with affection, even with love.  What did that mean in real practice?

W     Well, I think that the 18^th century was coming out of the previous century, which had been a bloody century, all over Europe and England as well. Then of course in America too, there was a tremendous amount of violence and bloodshed.  And so the emergence of a polite society, a society that had sociability, and people could get along, (inaudible) the kind of world that we’re familiar with.  That was the 18^th century enlightenment. They are reacting against that horrible previous century, which was full of war and bloodshed and kings being executed or driven out.

         And so there is a tremendous emphasis on acquiring politeness. And they meant by that much more than just manners. They meant a whole sense of civility, of getting along with people. And they wanted to understand in a scientific way, what held the society together. You see that the great scientific contribution of the age was not how the planets held together in the natural world. Now they thought that the social world should have a similar kind thing, akin to gravity, that would hold people together, kept them from tearing each other’s throats.  That’s what fascinated me. In the 18^th century, that’s what they concentrated on. And not just the North Americans, but also a whole series of thinkers in Great Britain and the Continent.  They are fascinated by what holds society together.

         That’s what we can appreciate when we see what’s happening in Iraq. That’s what the 17^th century was like, so they were interested in how to acquire sociability, civility, how do you acquire a society where people aren’t blowing each other up so to speak, or tearing each other apart.

M      Did this type of thinking affect the development of the Declaration or in particular the Constitution?

W     Well, I think that it affects different founders different ways.  Jefferson, to be a liberal, or to call a radical at that time, Jefferson is certainly one.  He believes very strongly in this natural sociability of human beings, and that’s why he believes in minimal government.  You see, government is the source of evil for him, because it gets in the way of people’s natural sociability.  It creates distinctions, but he’ is thinking mostly of monarchical government, one that creates distinctions, titles, monopolies, and if you can get the government out of the way, and let people naturally relate to each other, then you are going to have a more sociable, a more civil society.  It depends of course on people being naturally sociable.

         Hamilton for his part is a much more pessimistic human beings, he thinks we are much more selfish, we are more apt to exploit other people.  Therefore you need government to keep them apart.  So that’s where they differ, along a spectrum of their confidence in human nature.  Jefferson is much more confident, and Hamilton is much more skeptical.

M      How did they resolve this?  You talk in some of your books quite a bit that in one way American is founded on self-interest but that very self-interest would help us keep our liberty.

W     Well I think that’s what people of the early 19^th century came to that realization.  And Tocqueville, the great French observer of American life, and his book Democracy and America is still the best book on America by a foreigner, and maybe by anybody.  He thought that self-interest, rightly understood, was holding the society together.  And you have a lot of thinkers that have come to realize that perhaps that is the secret.  That the commercial dealings between people are an important source of decision, holding people together, that you don’t have to be selfless, that you don’t have to give up your self-interest in order to be a civil society.  But at the time of the Revolution, there were very few people who thought that.  They thought that that kind of selfishness that goes into commerce was destructive of virtue, or sociability.  By experience tells them by the 1820s or 30s that yes, the system can work, even if people are self-interested.  Not too self-interested – they can’t be so selfish that they are undermining each other. But that the feeling was that a commercial world, where people have to trust one another because of credit and making deals, that there is a kind of substitute to the enlightened sociability that the 18^th century had yearned for.

M      Well then would you say part of the American ideal is a combination of both (inaudible).

W     Yes I think that’s it.  Pretty well … combining self-interest, but not carrying it so far as to undermine sociability and having a good dose of civility and sociability as well.  Obviously that has worked very well for us, of course except for the Civil War, where the two sections, the North and the South engaged in a bloody war.  But within the society itself, the states themselves, sociability and commerce have seemed to be in a nice balance.

M      You also mention, which I strongly believe, and I think others do, that the United States was unique its founding as a nation, because it was founded on a set of beliefs.  Rather than on common ethnicity, religion and this was unusual.

W     That’s right, I think that is even truer today, because we have the whole world here – there is no single nationality in America, there is no ethnicity, we are a combination of immigrants and more than ever we are.  The only thing that can hold us together is not ethnicity, but this idea, these sets of ideas, which came out of the Revolution.  Everything we believe in as Americans, almost everything - I can’t think of anything that didn’t, that’s important - our noblest ideas, our highest aspirations, all came out of the Revolution.  Equality, liberty, Constitutionalism – the well-being of ordinary people, self-government – all of these things came out of the revolution.  That is why we go down to this founding to reaffirm our values that held us together. To be an American is not to be somebody, but to believe in something.  This gives us a tremendous advantage in the coming decades compared to the European nations, because of immigration.  We are able to absorb immigrants in ways that Europeans can only yearn for, can only look at with awe.  Because, to be a Frenchman, the French believe that you have to look like a Frenchman. But they haven’t been able to face the fact that 10% of the population is Arab.  And they can’t believe that all those Arabs are French, even though they’ve been there for 3 generations. And I think that’s true of the British as well. They can’t believe that all those Pakistanis are really British.  And I think that’s the problem they face, the Dutch, all the European nations, the Turks in Germany, they have a hard time accepting these different people

         We don’t have that problem, because to be an American, is not to look a certain way, it is not a race, it is not an ethnicity, all you have to do is follow a certain set of values, believe in certain things, and that’s a whole naturalization process.  It fills foreigners with awe.

M      What are the values we have to follow?

W     Well I think it would be equality, liberty, self-government, and all things, those particular values, the constitutions, the things that came out of the revolutions, the ideals and values that make us Americans.

M      You often use the word ‘Liberty’ – what did our founding fathers mean, what is your interpretation?

W     Well they meant a lot of different things, of course they inherited that from the English: English freedoms, English liberties, it meant the Writ of Habeas Corpus - you can’t be arrested and thrown in jail without the right of a trial, which of course an issue we’re now confronting with terrorism.  Those were important freedoms: that you can’t be arrested arbitrarily, that people will leave you alone for the most part, that the government doesn’t come in and tell you what to do. That is what I think they mostly meant by liberties.  Or negative liberty as we say - freedom from oppressions of various sorts, which of course most of the world had suffered for thousands of years. So the English-speaking world was particular keen on these liberties, and at the outset, most of these revolutionaries were of English heritage, and they brought  those common-law liberties with them.

M      One of the comments you make that resounds tremendously, is that most older, well-known Americans joined the Revolutionary movement, not out of fear of the future, but out of the desire to expand their rights and to pursue their happiness.  Would there be anything else that would be included in that list that you just gave, that would fit …

W     Well, I think they were interested in freedom and they responded to that notion that they were fighting for freedom, but I also think that they were fighting for the pursuit of happiness, if you will. The 1780’s, the decade following the Revolution, the Revolution ended the war in 1783, is the fastest growing, demographically, the fastest growing decade in American History.  Now why should that be? All the way up to the present, more people were having children more children in that decade.  It is not a decade of great immigration. So what happened was that people were optimistic, they were marrying earlier, and if they married early then they had more children, in the pre-birth control days. And as a consequence, people were marrying earlier because they had more confidence in the future, there was an excitement, an out bursting of confidence and energy in the post revolutionary era that accounts for this tremendous growth of society, and an explosion really of the society in the decades following the revolution.  I mean we occupied more territory in the single generation following the revolution than in the previous 150 years. We went all the way up the Mississippi. Now we ran over the native peoples, and ousted them, and that’s part of the tragedy of the story.  But it was an explosion of energy unlike any comparable explosion in modern times.

M      You seem to feel that the American shall we say character always responds to challenge and to new opportunities.  Is that something we may have gained?

W     Well it certainly was expressed in this post-revolutionary period. That’s where you get the creation of the American dream if you will. Where people come out of nowhere, and make it - move from obscurity to success.  There are a whole series of autobiographies written in the period between 1800 and 1860 or 1850, exploring the idea of the self-made man, and the route to success, and fulfilling the American dream.  That’s when the image of America as a place where can work hard and make it, is born.  Now I think that that dream still has a long resonance, and it particularly does with immigrants who come.  They come to the US thinking that “I have a chance here to make it, in a way that I couldn’t in my old country.”  And here I think that image of America is still a very strong one, and it was buried in this period that I’m talking about, the Revolution and the post Revolution decades.

M      Do think that image is still strong in shall we say those who were born in the US?  I sense a difference versus JFK not, what you can do ________________?  Today we seem to be focused in a more negative, not in a brand new direction…

W     Well, I think we’re an older society now, and we’re a lot more stable.  But I think there still is an awful lot of get up and go, in the sense of opportunity and there’s a sense of an explosion in new opportunities opening up.  I don’t know that we’re .. compared to the rest of the developed world, we still seem to be the leader in this respect.  Now I think China may come to rival us in the 21^st century.  But compared to Europe, we’re still the most open, the most opportunistic society, the one where people feel there’s a chance to make it in your own lifetime, to become a millionaire, if you will.  And I think in that sense it is very important.

M      Constantly through your writings about, in particular about the Constitution,  you talk about the concept of the sovereignty of the people.  And that was a very important principle.  What exactly was their understanding of the sovereignty of the people?  What did it mean…

W     Well, it turned out to be a particularly nasty legal problem because sovereignty technically meant legislative power.  And it couldn’t be divided.  And in the debate over the Constitution, the opponents of the Constitution said, “look you’re going to divide sovereignty, and it can’t be done. You got the Federal government, and you have the state governments, and we know from experience, that the sovereignty has to rest in one place, and is indivisible.”  And this was a really tricky argument for the Federalists –that is the people who supported the Constitution to deal with. So instead of trying to deny the idea of sovereignty which was very important in commodity debate in the 1760s, instead of trying to divide sovereignty, which was impossible, they relegated, and said “No, sovereignty will remain with the people”  That meant legal sovereignty.  And that’s of course, if you follow the logic of that, that’s why we can have referendums, why we can have ballot initiatives, we see the kind of thing that went on in California goes on in many states, where you actually recall the Governor, after he’s been elected?  This would be unheard of in any other developed nations.  And that comes from that notion that sovereignty, the ultimate, final, lawmaking authority resides with the people, not with their representatives.  And that is I think quite an innovative development that came out of the Revolution.

M      That’s important, and you go on to talk about the fact that the American Government was based on a ‘compact’ only among the people. Could you explain what a ‘compact’ is and why government is based on that.

W     I think they were trying to figure out how to hold a society together and in debates, they hit upon this idea of a contract, a social contract, which was a Lockian contract.  The society comes together, and everyone was cut apart, were torn apart by the Revolution, they were all tied to the king.  And the king is, they got rid of the king, and then what happens to the people?  You are flying around, and so we need to come together, and form a contract, and this is where they refer to John Locke, the English philosopher, that gives them a sense of society in which they can do a create a government.  The relationship between the society and the government is not one of a contract, that is the way the English thought.  The Americans do not have that kind of relationship with the government.  Every part of the government is representative.  So it is a very different thing from Europe.

M      Your last point is important, and you refer to it – that every part of government is representative, and that doesn’t just mean, just the elected.

W     That’s right. That wasn’t the way they thought of it at the outset – they created Senates for example in all of the states, upper houses, which most states have, except for Nebraska. They all continue to have senates.  But at the outset, the senates weren’t supposed to represent anything, they just were themselves, they had no constituents.  But by a decade or so, people began arguing with the senates.  They can’t have an aristocracy in the government. So people began justifying the senate as a kind of double representation of the people.  Now that was unheard of in the English-speaking world, the people being represented twice.  So, why should they represent the people twice?  Then why not three times and four times, and soon all of the agents of government were regarded as representatives, including judges. Right now I think we have 37, maybe 39 states elect their judges, which was the logical conclusion.  If your judges are representative, and some kind of agent of the people, then we should elect them.  So that’s what happened. And they began to elect judges in the early 19^th century, and today we have many states who elect their judges.

M      Was there ever any thought about electing even the highest judges?

W     Well the Federal system was formed before this thinking got taken to far (to bar?) and we’re stuck with it.  We’d have to have a Constitutional amendment to change the Federal Constitution, to have elected judges.  So our Federal Judges actually have lifetime tenure, no limits whatsoever on age or any other way, unlike the states.  Most of the states have all kinds of limits on their judiciary.

M      Now I understand that lifetime tenure is in support of checks and balances.  Do you think that was what our founding fathers would have liked?

W     Oh they definitely did.  In drawing up the Constitution, they wanted the separation of powers, and the judiciary to be a separate part of a tripartite system, and this was novel, this was new.  The judiciary had not been as powerful as that before.

M      James Wilson, the brilliant legal mind in one of the first Supreme Court justices, mentioned that the right of representing is conferred by the act of electing.

W     That’s right. That happened in America in this period.  It was not true in England. Election was not the source of a criterion of representation for the English.  As a consequence, they didn’t worry too much if about whether everybody voted.  That was the issue that broke the empire apart.  We didn’t believe in their notion of virtual representation. They just did not believe that election was the criterion of representation.  As long as we believe, if we took the position that election was the criteria of representation, and that you couldn’t be represented unless you voted, which of course has led to obvious Constitutional Amendments which expanded the suffrage, including the….

M      … Therefore elections, I’ll put it from my viewpoint, is the complete basis of self-governance?

W     Well, that’s how we tend to think, I think probably naively. You can have an election as we did in Iraq, or we had some in Viet Nam, we somehow assume that we have a democracy going.  Of course it doesn’t work quite as easily as that. But that’s our experience, as a consequence, for example in the 1960s when the students were revolting and rebelling about Viet Nam, well the politician’s, the Congressional solution to that was, well let’s give them the vote.  So we lowered the voting age to 18, thinking that somehow the vote would change, would solve the problem.  But of course that was not the real source of the difficulty.  I think we probably put too much emphasis on voting, as a source of democracy.  It takes a lot more than voting to put together a civil society then.

M      That’s what I would agree on. Would you expand on that, additionally?

W     I think first you’ve got to have liberty. And you have to have a court system that works, you have to have a respect for law.  And then if you have that foundation, you can move more slowly into the democratic part.  But if you don’t have respect for individual rights, and individual liberties, and you don’t have a legal system that respects those things, then getting people to vote is not going to have the kind of results that one would like.  I think that if you look at the Western democracies, the secret they had was respect for individual liberties and rights, and not the mass voting, or majoritarian voting.  That is not what constitutes a democracy.

M      Well, I think a lot of people think of the voting strictly as a majority rule.  And we here in the US are fortunate that we have that system of checks and balances, so that minorities are protected.  I think that’s the difference.  But that raises the question, we constantly hear ourselves saying we’re a democracy, others say we’re a republic, others say we’re a representative democracy.  Are they just words?

W     Well, they’re not quite words. A republic was what we started with, in the sense that that not everybody voted, and we had an awful lot of indirect election – the Electoral College was designed so that originally that a group of electors would be the people who voted for the President.  Now that got changed pretty quickly with the creation of political parties, but that was not the intention at the outset.  The Electors were supposed to independent people, who would make their own decision; they weren’t to be dictated to by anybody. But this got changed.  So in that sense, we got started with that kind of representative republic, and not a democracy, which was regarded, I think in pejorative terms, at the outset, if you read James Madison in his Tenth Federalist, he doesn’t like democracy, because he thinks of it as a pure democracy – a sort of New England town meeting, which is not possible in a large state, where the people simply… I think he’d be appalled by the idea of referenda and ballot initiatives.  So in that sense we have created all kinds of curbs on popular pressure but at the same time, we are a democratic society, I think and certainly by the 1820s and 30s Americans came to think of themselves as exclusively a democracy.  They didn’t use the, they weren’t embarrassed by using the term democracy, as they would have in 1780.

M      Okay, and I’m fascinated by the warning that Madison gave us in 1790, that the really great danger to liberty in the extended republic of America, was if the individual becomes insignificant in his own eyes, …. to the very foundation of representative government.  What did he really mean by that?  What would be an example of how a citizen could become insignificant?

W     Well, if he had the sense of becoming lost in the masses, I think that was a real failure as the population grew, and you would not be able to…. And I think that is a real concern in a vast democracy, where you don’t feel that that your vote counts for anything, the only thing is too far removed from you, that’s why I think local government is so important to give the people a sense of participation.  Even if it just means sitting on a jury, or voting for your school board.  Somehow, the sense that you are controlling things, that’s Madison was concerned about – that you were too far removed from the Federal government, because you have so many people over such great distances.  That was always a fear in the 18^th century that a large republic could not hold together.  That was kind of conventional wisdom, so that someone like Montesquieu, the French philosopher predicted that large republics would not hold together, and he would not have been surprised by what happened in Yugoslavia, when the totalitarian, authoritarian rule was removed, people went flying about.  And the same was true in the Soviet Union, the same was true in Iraq, once Saddam Hussein was removed.  And Montesquieu predicted that, he said, well if people don’t have virtue, don’t have the willingness to curb their selfishness, they are going to run amuck.  And that’s why the republic was such an experiment, and such a great adventure, and so difficult to maintain.  I mean after all governments from beginning of time have been monarchies, or authoritarian governments.  And we can still see why authoritarian governments exist, because people don’t have sufficient virtue – that would be the term that the founders would use to describe what happens when authority is removed. When authoritarian government is removed.  So you need that basic virtue. You can define that various ways – a willingness to suppress your selfish interest, or for the sake of the community.

M      It would also mean, from the opposite point of view, a willingness to become involved in the community.

W     Oh definitely, that was of course always a part or republican government, which participation in politics, in governing, to be part of the colony. That was central, going back to Aristotle – maintaining your virtue, your sense of engagement.  And that’s why I think it’s important that people can’t always be a federal official, everyone can’t be a Congressman, but they can run for their school board, they can be part of their wards, or their local districts.  And that is what I think is needed to keep people engaged in the government, in society.

M      Sounds like your saying it’s like the old saying “all politics is local?”

W     Well, I think that is very true, even in America, even though we have this vast Federal government, most people participate in, if they are involved in politics, they do it at the local level.

M      And yet many people feel that the local government no longer has any power, and they’ve opted out, at least in some studies I’ve read.

W     Well, that’s too bad, I think if you have the sense when you are voting the President, whether you vote is going to count very much, but if you voting for whether to put sewers in your town or not, then you know, that can really matter, and people do come out for that, where they might only have 50% participation at the Federal level.

M      40 % in the last election, of registered voters, by the way.

W     It’s not been all that great, but maybe at local levels, maybe its much greater.  I don’t know, I don’t have the facts at my fingertips

M      It’s disturbing that the US is one of the lowest in shall we say of democratic countries.

W     That’s true, although a place like Venezuela may have 90%  - that doesn’t necessarily meant that that is a good thing, it may be that people are happy with their lives, they don’t happen to believe that the government is the be-all and end-all of their lives.. and therefore, well, they had something else to do on that Tuesday and they don’t bother to vote.  So there is something to be said for that.  Also, registration is much easier elsewhere, our percentage of registered voters is pretty good – you have to break down the statistics, so I’ve been told.  But we’re not quite as bad if you consider not the whole population, but just those who are registered. We have a large number of people who don’t even bother to register.

M      Yes, that’s a concern and that’s one of the things we’re constantly trying to understand why people have opted out of the process.  What would our founders feel about our democracy today?  Is it what they envisioned?

W     I think they would be kind of awed by it, I think they had some doubts about whether it would last, they certainly did foresee a civil war or break up of the nation.  And they didn’t think it would last all this long.  And to have it turn out to be this little group of people huddled along the Atlantic coast, several 100 years ago, and in 3 o4 centuries, to emerge as the greatest power in the world, whether for good or for ill, it is a fantastic story, and I think they would have been kind of overwhelmed by what happened.   Now in some respects, Hamilton would be more pleased than Jefferson and Madison.  He wanted a big government, he would be pleased with the Pentagon, the CIA, and the Federal Reserve, and a million men and women under arms, he would say “this is right on, this is what I wanted, a state that could take on the world.”  Madison and Jefferson of course had a very different view of government, they wanted minimal government, so I think they would be a little taken aback the size of the Federal government.

M      If they were here today, what would they look at that would be of most concern, or worry them.

W     That would be hard to know, since they are 18^th century people.  I think they would be concerned with the things that we are concerned with.  Can we continue to hold ourselves together, can we handle the problem of immigration, which is a major problem, I think we are better equipped to handle it,  I would be optimistic about that.  But those would be the issues. Can we maintain security for the society, and at the same time maintain civil liberties for individuals.  Those tradeoffs that we are concerned with we debate about, all the big issues that we are currently facing, they would think that those are the major issues as well.

M      Would they be concern with the amount of money interests lobbying Congress or the cost of an election?

W     Oh yes, they would be very concerned about that, because they always felt that money was the source of all evil in politics. That’s why Benjamin Franklin proposed that all members of the executive branch serve without pay.  That was kind of naive, but he wanted people so wealthy that they would never have to be bought off, is what he was saying.  Which obviously that’s not the argument, for the people in Congress, particularly in the Senate.   But it’s the cost of the elections that results in all this money.  And we have that by the 1^st Amendment.   The British don’t have this problem, because they simply say to the politicians, you can’t use the TV to advertise until 4 weeks before the election.  Well we can’t do that, we can’t limit because of the 1^st Amendment.   The Supreme Court won’t let us – won’t let the Congress limit the amount of money spent on TV.  It’s the television that costs most of the money.

M      Getting back to the Constitution, the words that always inspire us, “We the People” as a preamble. What to you does that mean, do those words mean and what powers do they confer?

W     I think this goes back to the notion of the popular sovereignty of the people, and it was just a brilliant phrase, because someone suggested at the convention that we start with “We the States” of New York, Massachusetts, and so on, and that would have really not had the same impact.  We the People is really fundamental. And I think it’s important – I don’t know if you are familiar with the National Constitution Center, it’s a museum in Philadelphia, and I was involved in some of the planning of that.  And what we wanted to do – it’s right across from Independence Hall, its right at the other end of the mall – we wanted to subvert the feelings that people had coming out of Independence Hall, thinking “oh my goodness, those 55 men were geniuses, and of course that isn’t the source of the success of the Constitution, the success of the Constitution is due to “We the People” meaning the people through the whole history, including us, right now, and I think that’s the whole purpose of the national Constitution Center which is to show that the Constitution survives, not because these geniuses created it – 55 men, 200 years ago, but we sustain it every day, through all of these 200+ years.  And it's our Constitution, not theirs so to speak – and I think that is the meaning of “We the People.”

M      And do you think most citizens really understand that today?

W     Well I hope so, I think it something they might not think about it everyday, but I think in some limited sense, they realize they are living in a special place, and the Constitution stands for their liberties, their freedoms, their self-government. And I think there is a real respect for it.

M      One of the things that is commented on is whether the Constitution, gives us the right to vote, because it is not stated explicitly.

W     Well, its presumed and the voting comes through the states, actually, but I think the whole system is based on the right to vote, and I think it is a presumption, its sort of taken for granted. Because the Constitution is really a very short document – it's about 8,000 words. The Federal Constitution, and I think that’s the beauty of it.  The state constitutions are huge documents – over 200 –300 pages long. And the Federal Constitution is very short, and we have filled in a lot with experience, and in many ways it’s an unwritten Constitution.

M      And that’s also the beauty of it, so that it can continually be argued about to the meaning.

W     Right so it can evolve and develop, and it certainly has done that through the centuries.

M      Let me try out an idea that I have continually talked about. It so happens, of course we’re concerned with vote, we’re concerned with democracy, and having the voice of the citizens heard, as in self-government.  But in studying the word ‘vote’ I found that the ancient derivation comes from the meaning that is “sacred word” which I love. Because I think seeing it as the sacred word of the people, carrying out their responsibility to participate in self-governing.  And I often think of the First Amendment, Freedom of Speech and to me the vote is the ultimate freedom of speech.  Would our founders have seen it in that way, or not?

W     Well, they certainly put a stock in voting, yes.  They certainly believed in voting; that was the whole point of the Revolution.  They had been taxed by Parliament, by a Parliament that they didn’t vote for. And that to them was a deprivation of their liberty. And they were willing to go to war, and fight for that freedom.  So I think yes, they took that as the highest priority, the idea of being able to vote for the person who is going to tax you.  It is fundamental to their sense of liberty and sense of self-government. 

M      We’ll be ending in a moment, but I’d like to hear from you as to your favorite Revolutionary character, and why?

W     Well I think it has to be George Washington.  Without him, I just don’t think the whole thing would have worked.  He was an unusual man, who took very seriously the values of restraint. I mean his most important act was when he surrendered his sword at the end of the war, and went back to Mt. Vernon. That electrified the world.  That any victorious general would give up political rewards!  I mean every single victorious general in history, from Caesar on through Cromwell, and Marlborough, and of course later Napoleon – all expected political rewards commensurate with their military achievements, but not Washington.  And it just really overawed people.  And he had to be dragged back into public service, because he had promised that he would retire. And I think that this willingness to give up power that impressed people, and he early set a standard for leadership that I think was followed by subsequent presidents.  And he was, of course, the first President, and he set precedents that were terribly important for the future.

M      I think his farewell address was such a shock - that it was just published in a Philadelphia newspaper, without fanfare.

W     That’s right, well most people thought that he would serve for life - he would be kind of like an elected king.  Jefferson thought he would serve for life, and he would die in office, and then the Vice President would take over, and so on.  It would be similar to what we see with the presidencies in the Middle East. You remember Mubarak, and Saddam Hussein, would have gone on forever until he died in office, and Mubarak will probably do the same.  Musharaff in Pakistan.  They seemed to be presidents for life.  Well that’s what they thought would happen to Washington, but he set this precedent – he retired, and Jefferson followed it with 2 terms, and that stayed the rule until FDR in 1940. So Washington was terribly important in showing what an ideal leader ought to be.