Genius of the People Quotes

“none wanted him to use the war-making power, the assumed ultimate responsibility for the nation’s security, as a ruse to transform his office into that of an elective monarch, with all the inevitable consequences which would finally reduce citizens to mere petitioners whose needs and wisdom would be commonly sacrificed in the name of national defense, and whose criticisms would bring charges of disloyalty against them.”
― Charles L. Mee Jr., Genius of the People

“Most of the localists agreed with Franklin, who said: “We discover some errors in our general and particular constitutions; which it is no wonder they should have, the time in which they were formed being considered. But these we shall mend.” What was needed was not a whole new government, but only some modest alterations in the old one, and the localists arrived in Philadelphia with that limited aim in mind. “We”
― Charles L. Mee Jr., Genius of the People

“Nor did the idea of a central government seem compatible with sentiment. After all, the states had histories that went back two centuries, and each state had its distinctive character and qualities that its citizens were loath to see diminished. Franklin, back in the 1750s and 1760s, when he had been deputy postmaster general, had traveled up and down the coast on visits of inspection and seen the tremendous variety of the colonies. Even a brief catalogue of them suggests some of the proud distinctiveness they cherished. Massachusetts, settled by Puritans, was populated by middle-class farmers, tradesmen, and artisans, without extremes of wealth and poverty. Its economy was stable (save for the temporary postwar dislocations that led to Shays’ Rebellion). Massachusetts was”
― Charles L. Mee Jr., Genius of the People

“No doubt, some of the champions of local government hoped to preserve such unsavory local customs as slavery or the local rule of a small group of privileged men, but many of the defenders of local government argued honestly that the states presented the best hope of securing liberty. Liberty, in the eighteenth century, meant not simply liberty from some intrusive outside power. It meant the active exercise of control over one’s life, the possession of power in one’s own hands. It meant government small enough and close enough to home to be directly accountable and responsive. It meant self-government, not government handed over to some remote rulers. Strictly understood, the principle of local self-government meant a share of power more or less equal to everyone else’s share of power, a citizenry more or less equal in wealth and status, not one dominated by one small group or another; that is to say, it meant democracy”
― Charles L. Mee Jr., Genius of the People

“In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant Apprehension of War has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body.” This was why republics must always hate war: Whatever happened on the battlefield, they always lost their liberty, in part if not in whole, and if the state of tension was permanent, so, too, was the loss of liberty. “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war as a ruse to keep the people enslaved. Should the states separate entirely from one another, these would be the consequences,” and anyone who had been accessory to such historic consequences “could never be forgiven by their Country, nor by themselves.”
― Charles L. Mee Jr., Genius of the People