The ideological origins of the American Revolution were resolutely anti-authority. They were, equally resolutely, anti-leadership or, more precisely, anti-any leadership that previously was legitimate.
The ideological origins of the American Revolution were – no other word for it – revolutionary. They called for the total overthrow, by violence, if necessary, of the old order. The leader of the old order, the British king, was to be tossed on the ash heap of American history. Whereas the leader of the new order, the president of the United States, was to be something altogether different. A leader who was accountable to his followers.
Unlike the leader of the old order who was an autocrat, the leader of the new order would be a democrat. Unlike the leader of the old order who inherited the right to rule, the leader of the new order would be granted the right to rule. Granted the right to rule by those over whom he ruled. And, unlike the leader of the old order who was leader for life, the leader of the new order would be obliged after a time to surrender his power to another who peaceably would replace him.
The American Revolution was like all revolutions – the action was driven not by those at the top of the established order but by those in the middle and at the bottom. It was driven not by leaders but by followers. By followers some of who, in turn, became leaders.
Of course, the original leaders were the intellectual leaders: the political philosophers who led the Enlightenment. Leading lights such as John Locke, Montesquieu, and Mary Wollstonecraft, all of whom planted the seed. Planted the idea that ordinary people, followers, had rights. Rights that included electing the leaders they wanted and rejecting the leaders they did not.
Which explains why during the decade that led up to the American Revolution it was defiance of people in power that “poured from the colonial presses and was hurled from half the pulpits of the land.” It was the right, the need, the absolute obligation to disobey legally constituted authority that had become “the universal cry.” In other words, the American Revolution was also like all revolutions in that the “doctrine according to godliness” was turned on its head. No longer was obedience to authority valued, the coin of this new realm was resistance to authority.*
The rebels were not given to empty cries and murmurs. Their resistance and defiance and their suspicion of people in power were not merely in theory. They were in practice. Hence Americans’ innate antagonism to authority was to be etched in the equivalent of stone. It’s why the United States of America has a government deliberately designed to check power and to balance it. And it’s why the United States of America has a government deliberately designed to distribute power among the three different branches – executive, legislative, and judicial. And among the three different levels – federal, state, and local.
But there is an irony in all this. For the 21st century threat to American democracy has come not from where the Founders imagined. Not from leaders who wanted more power. Instead, it has come from leaders who want less. It has come from leaders, specifically elected officials, who have so wholly surrendered their power and authority that they can longer be called leaders. Rather they are followers – followers of the most craven sort. Followers who dare not breathe even a word or lift even a finger against their leader – lest he punish them.
One could argue that President Donald Trump makes King George III look like child’s play. And one could argue that current Congressional Republicans are the abject subjects that the king could only have dreamed of. But the danger that America250 faces – the danger of autocracy smothering democracy – does not come from a single individual or even a collection of individuals. Rather it is a failure of imagination. Neither the Philosophers nor the Founders conceived of a world in which the greatest political threat came not from those who wanted more power but from those who wanted less. For there can be no practical purpose to checks and balances, or to separation of powers, unless people do what they are supposed to do, including resisting when resistance is right. Cowering in a corner will never cut it.
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*The quote is in Barbara Kellerman, The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership (Oxford University Press, 1984). It is from Bernard Bailyn’s classic, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution.