We must remember that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33, a document which he acknowledged represented "the American mind."
These genius Founders of America were not prisoners of their own time and place. They had studied the great writings from previous ages and times, and their educations had not excluded writings from religious sources from their purview or examination, as have the educations of current generations.
They possessed an understanding of civilization's long struggle against oppression and tyranny in all its forms, and they knew and acknowledged the real source of their lives, rights and liberty.
The assumptions they made about the qualifications of elected officials never envisioned senatorial (and presidential) candidates like some of those of the past few decades and today.
Never would they have foreseen a populace who could believe a man was "brilliant" or "intellectual" whose philosophy would agree with that of Mao, Marx, Lenin, or Keynes.
We are in a different time, and many of our leaders are limited in knowledge by "their own little time and space" on this earth, making decisions which may destroy the liberty of hundreds of millions of future generations--all because of their own limitations.
Jefferson wrote that Mason was the wisest man of their generation.
Within that Declaration of Mason's was this:
XV That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
Now, consider the problems we now suffer in politics. The last "recurrence to fundamental principles" was HOW long ago? Even politicians know little of our Constitution and even less of the bills they pass.
I just finished a presentation at a Constitution and Country Fair = = even most of the self-identified constitutionalists know little about our foundation.
Thank God for FReepers and the readers of these wonderful threads by Publius and Billthedrill. Keep up the good work.
I have difficulty comprehending how at a time when travel was difficult and time consuming you say ...
>>They possessed an understanding of civilization’s long struggle against oppression and tyranny in all its forms, and they knew and acknowledged the real source of their lives, rights and liberty.<<
Yet in a time when tele-conferencing is so common and when we can transfer entire libraries around the world in just seconds you say ....
>We are in a different time, and many of our leaders are limited in knowledge by “their own little time and space” on this earth, making decisions which may destroy the liberty of hundreds of millions of future generations—all because of their own limitations.<
That is a keeper quote. The danger of demagogues robbing one to buy the vote of another was well known to our Framers.
Our system is fit only for a virtuous people.
Oh, but they did. Not that it detracts from the force of your argument, with which I agree, but recall that in the previous essay Madison complains bitterly about the poor, deluded people of Rhode Island, captured by a populist rural movement that was blocking the ratification of the Constitution. Madison hoped that the institution of a Senate would provide a guard against that sort of thing. If it has, it isn't entirely obvious.
But I confess I am at a complete loss to account for the widespread conviction that Mr. 0bama is in any sense an intellectual. He hasn't a single intellectual accomplishment to his name: book, paper, theory, painting, sculpture, musical composition, philosophical treatise, nothing. The hyperbolic statement that he is secure in being the smartest individual in any room he walks into borders on the ludicrous and if true would be the greatest tragedy I could possibly imagine in the fellow's life. Inasmuch as at least some of those rooms reside at Columbia and Harvard I suspect that the converse is more likely to have been true, that he was, in fact, the stupidest person in the room including the janitor. That isn't a crime; I've been in that position frequently myself. But the complete lack of intellectual humility attendant to the claim leads me to believe it can't be true. If it were, it wouldn't need to be made.
Nevertheless, one can see why such luminaries as Marx, Lenin, and Mao are high in the pantheon of the Left. These truly were geniuses, but at only one thing: the accretion of political power. Not, obviously, at its use once acquired. The promised social justice turned to hideous oppression, the promised economic prosperity to squalor, the promised withered state to an enormous, murderous monster. The true believers on the Left hold to a man or woman that he or she could do it better given the chance, but no one ever has. But as far as the accretion of power, if that's what one is after, theirs is a very effective model to follow.
Hence the dependence on class warfare and the politics of resentment on the part of the radical Left. The smart ones know it's only a tool employed for the dominance of the cynical over the credulous. The rest actually believe the whole thing, despite three quarters of a century of disproof and countless millions of victims' testimony to the contrary. I think 0bama may be in the latter situation - having reached his goal of attaining power he is utterly hapless in its employment. It could be worse, much worse. He could be good at it.