John Adams

I'm writing a paper on John Adams. I haven't written in here in a long time and probably should find some time before I go to Uganda. John Adams was a stud. He's my hero. I think everyone should learn about him so that's why I included all this info about him:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.

Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

“Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people…Be it remembered, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we have not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understanding and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers” (McCullough, 70-71). “Government is a plain, simple, intelligent thing, founded in nature and reason, quite comprehensible by common sense…The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think…Let us dare to read, thinking, speak, and write…Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments…that many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on a maxims and established as preliminaries, even before Parliament existed” (McCullough, 60).

“There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all others, by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors, in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike….The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved….Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable….There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty” (McCullough, 70-71). A.D. Morse, author of The politics of John Adams elaborates on this view of power that John Adams had and says that they are at the foundation of the politics of John Adams, “The first is that slavery and freedom proceed from one and the same principle in human nature, namely the love of power; later in the Discources on Davila, the more comprehensive phrase, “thirst for distinction” is substituted for “love of power”; but the change does not imply any departure from the orginial idea. A second view of the utmost importance to the comprehension of the system, is that this love of power is an “aspiring, noble principle, founded in benevolence.” From this it follows that the aim of a wise public policy must be not to extirpate “the love of power” in the human heart, but so to direct and regulate its operation that it shall issue in freedom. It is certainly one of the noblest characteristics of John Adams that he felt habitually a profound reverence for human nature, and finds in the primary passions of man the proofs of divine wisdom” (Morse).