There are some things that astound me....

One of them is the belief that we should trust the government.

Why is this astounding to me? Perhaps because I know from US History that we should not trust, or if we do, trust but verify.

Quick, what was the worst administration regarding civil rights in US History? If you said the Bush administration, you'd be wrong. It was the presidency of John Adams. Why does this matter? Because the people who lived around that time fought him in interesting ways, a few ended up in jail...a few more than less than a dozen in fact. And what Adams tried to do was to transform the presidency into some form of monarchy. Partly he believed that the country needed a king or something similar to it. He was one of the first true conservatives in the Burkian sense, not our modern sense. Yes, there is a difference, and it behooves the student of US History to learn it.

After Jefferson won the most important election of the Republic, that was 1800, the imperial presidency was dialed down not just significantly, but completely. You could say that this was the first, probably one of the few times in world history, where somebody who won power surrendered it.

But what is happening these days? We have teams. You are either a member of the Republican team or a member of the Democratic team.

There are plenty of people who trust the guv'ment, when their team is in power. Strange... the founding fathers who first had to fight king George and then John Adams would shake their heads.

Were they better than we? No. They just had come away from fighting a war against an Empire, and then against an authoritarian from hell. But we seem unable to learn similar lessons. The Presidency should be scaled back from this Imperial Presidency with powers that would horrify the creators of the Constitution. Granted, it got there due to some inherent problems in the Constitution and chiefly because we are an Empire and you cannot run a successful Empire with a limited Presidency... I mean, you need a selected monarchy.

They also had a much lower percentage of the adult population voting, and it was a small country. Which at times makes me wonder if we indeed passed the actual limits of a democratic system. And we are just going with the motions out of costume?

Given that less than fifty percent of the population votes in a presidential election, and don't get me started in off year elections... and that we treat the political system like a football game, with teams... yep I have little hope that anything will truly change. This is as long as people keep thinking that we elect leaders... I wonder if Jefferson is doing somersaults right about now, as well as Madison. That said, John Adams must be smiling from beyond the grave. He was born two hundred years too early. Indeed he was. What he did in the WH belongs in the modern political system, and in the end Adams idea of an inherited form of monarchy has succeeded, since he could not get people to vote for a king.

Granted, the fact that the current occupant is black, and women vote might make Abigail Adams happy, on the latter mind you. And that black man in the WH at least as John is concerned would be ahem problematic. As a slave owner this would be a hell of an adjustment, but one I am willing to bet he'd be willing to make. After all he lost to Jefferson in 1800, but his vision has become the reality we know live under... Jefferson's vision where you might trust your government, when they behave, and rise against them... even if it means jail, when they don't, is mostly gone, as we have a game going. Alas, I don't expect many folks to even understand why I wrote this, after all as members of a team, asking them to demand from their team anything is kind of impossible.

And John I now admit it. You seem to have won the long conflict between the two major sides of American political currents...

So what was the most critical attack on civil rights? No, not George Bush... two hundred years earlier one John Adams set the way for George, fully and completely. And now I see Adams won.

Like humans, nations evolve. The Jackson/Adams conflict was an early evolutionary step that set things in motion, just as the compromises on Slavery in the Constitutional Convention set us in a direction that inevitably led to the civil war.

I disagree with the "won" description because we as a nation still exist and many things can happen.

Particularly since the Civil War, when the nation involved away from the concept of Individual States into one with a strong central government over an single nation, we have moved along the track of Empire. President Teddy, though a progressive in many ways, was an early Emperor.

The empire can end. We could find that we have not solved the economic problems that will unravel the fabric of our nation. The right wing fringe could push us into a civil war, or an American Intifadah, which is what a civil war would look like. The rest of the world, that is recovering from the economic recession (See "Japan Joins Recent Wave Of Economic Expansion") could decide that the US is not playing ball by refusing to regulate blanks or solve long term health care problems that are breaking our economy and move to shut us out. Hell, India and China as the emerging superpowers could simply eclipse us.

But Adams did not win, just as American Imperialism hasn't won. We cold change.

expected in a democratic society, aka trust but verify, and we do not elect leaders... yes he did... in very nuanced ways.

As to the empire, it is coming to an end, but the imperial presidency is not.

and reveal the wall, sooner rather than later I fear.

Is a Democratic Administration remarkably different from a Republican administration.

Under Bush, the Republicans wanted abortion banned. They had a huge class war shopping list. They pretended to try but never did anything substantive.

They never really pushed for the big changes Republicans said they wanted to make. They only promised and then jerked the ball away like Lucy.

It occurs to me that or elected officials are all just clones of Lucy. They make promises they never intend to keep, jerking the football away every time. No matter what side of the political spectrum we occupy as citizens, we are all collective Charlie Browns.

They only cure is to remove them from power, and we are big enough as a nation that there will always be enough voters to extend the Status quo.

Those of us on the left need to demonstrate. March to the nearest federal building, congressional office, mayors office, with a sign that said we want the public option. We can not let the right wing fringe provide an excuse for the Democratic Party to refuse to give Americans what we need.

the left, whatever it is... is not willing to do that... it is not cool anymore.

And to demonstrations, they won't work either... we need national strikes, and accept that politicians are lucy... give them the ball and watch, as you take it away.

That is my point, and why Adams won

As long as it is my bitch, I trust them... does not matter what party at this point.

After all politics is like religion, and when your religion is winning, whatever that means, you are a happy lark.

He was only one step in an evolutionary process that moved back and forth within our culture. His big changes failed at the time. But a system evolves whether it is an species or a culture evolves. Adams ideas work, and had worked for thousands of years. Others reintroduced them or reinvented them.

Culturally, we are not a people inclined to be active in politics. In a winner take all system, every election can be won by 1 vote. In a culture that encouraged active participation (ours does not) and where participation was expected, we would not be having this conversation. But it was not one person or even a small group that brought us here. Tens of thousands of historical decisions and cultural reactions to thos historical decisions made Americans the people we are.

It occurs to me that we may be seeing a deep flaw in the democratic system, one that our founding fathers saw and tried to avoid by creating three coequal branches of government with a system of checks and balances to keep the tyrany of the majority of those who vote from running over the rest. Perhaps it is a flaw in representational democracy. Once we elect our representatives, we are stuck with them, because the system is rigged to keep them in power.

I don't think the issue is winners an loosers. I think we are glimpsing something deep in the human psyche involved with power and how individuals and groups react to that power.

now the system does have weaknesses and perhaps it does not work in this size of a country, another discussion, another day.

Yanno, our beloved judiciary tradition, the death penalty, is hardly acceptable in the rest of the "civilized" world. And voluntarily offering over 5,000 troops (so far) to merry slaughter in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan? Hell, they CHEERED it!

Why wonder why they're afraid their government will convene "death panels"? We have them now. They're called juries.

They cheered (!) our newly created right to torture (dark) people. They fear what they created.

Why did we grant our govenment the right to kill us? It should be repealed.

But sometimes they get it right.

This has nothing to do with Adams, just felt like leaving that comment.

"History has tried to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians.  Now, to go and stick one at the very head of government couldn’t be wise." - Mark Twain

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine

IMO trusting politicians is kinda like trusting a plumber. You better flush the toilet he fixed before you pay him.

and not somebody you trust as far as you can thrown and verify what they do with their actions.

Problem is that this is what the American president has become... a team leader... not a representative.

Your point is well taken on Adams, John that is. His policies were dreadful, so much so that Jefferson lobbied
against them through surrogates, fearing that he would be jailed by Adams.

Your point on teams is very important. This promotes loyalty and then, of course, we have our favorite players.
We want to trust the players, make up excuses when it seems that we cant, and get screwed every time.

I'm in favor of no teams, no names, and no nepotism. Just judge politicians by their good or not so good deeds.
That would make a huge difference. I dont' care if the president is someone I'd like living next door or if
they're someone I could be comfortable with socially. I want to know what the presidents are doing or going to do. I don't care about their wife, their hobbies, etc. Get to work do the job, and don't make a ruckus.

Excellent post. More on this later.

and why we, to a point, should fear them as well.

control them. That is one of those great flaws in our Constitution, like Slavery.

we need a proportional representation system