Gordon Wood

 Gordon Wood died yesterday at the age of 92, amazingly struck down by a car and not his advanced age. Wood was one of the finest living historians of US History and certainly the Dean of Historians when it came to the American Revolution. Himself a student of Bernard Bailyn, Wood argued for the essential revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. He stood against some - and I occasionally include myself - that argued that it was more a War of Independence than a true "revolution," especially if compared against the French or Russian Revolutions. In this telling, the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is much more of a revolution than replacing the monarchy with a representative government.

But of course, establishing a Republic - over so large an area no less - was a revolutionary act. It was fraught with pitfalls and dangers that the generation that framed the Constitutions was very much aware of. 

None more so than James Madison.

It was Madison who spent years thinking about how to preserve liberty and self-government. Today, we think of them as being reinforcing, but it was understood at the time that self-government tended to degenerate to anarchy, which led to the rise of a dictator. As Madison wrote in the Federalist: 

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This framework is at the heart of our long practice in representative government, of combining democracy and republicanism to create something truly new over 235 years ago when the Constitution was written. 

As Richardson notes at the link above, Madison was also the author of the Bill of Rights. Initially reluctant, he came to see how writing down fundamental rights was part of the needed constraints on those who governed, especially the desire of those who - once in power - might wish to restrict the freedom of the press to blunt criticism of themselves, or perhaps ban public assemblies and petitions to the same purpose. 

It also extended to the free practice of religion, which had been pioneered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island in the 17th century, but then picked up by Virginians like Madison and Thomas Jefferson. If a government could dictate religious belief and practice, what couldn't they dictate? The free exercise of conscience preceded all other rights.

As we begin to mark the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, we can see these "inalienable rights" under assault from a cabal of wicked people who surround a fundamentally ignorant and weak bully who would destroy those very rights that the Revolution was fought over. Pete Hegseth wants to tell servicemember how to worship. Various creatures wish to destroy the free press and outlaw protests. This is not hyperbole. 

Wood's death - just a few weeks before the 250th anniversary of the declaration of universal, inalienable rights - should help us reflect on how those rights which were so revolutionary 250 years ago are not self-enforcing. Wood reminded us that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition, and at the heart of the revolution was the belief that government must belong to the governed.