john adams- behind the musket...

If you’re not watching John Adams every Sunday, please start.  HBO’s miniseries on the forgotten Founding Father is awesome and here’s why: 

1)    We are all endlessly informed (though usually incorrectly) about the other FF’s- notably Washington, Jefferson & Franklin.  Somehow, Adams has become the “Jan from the Brady Bunch” of the Founding Fathers.  He was totally there for the whole thing & had a big (if not the biggest) role in it but really, who the eff knows anything about him?  The series is a great way to learn something new about someone you didn’t know you were supposed to know.

2)    It reveals an infinitely more honest, candid and authentic version of the lead up to the Revolution and the creation of our nation.  I love stories, I really do.  But the fairy tale we’re taught about the founding of America falls into the “Paul Bunyan” realm of historically accuracy.  It wasn’t all puppies and unicorns for our slave-owning, land grabbing, Indian killing, puritanical, WASP-y, Neo British Imperialist forefathers.  They, like any other group of rich people, had their own very personal reasons for separating from Great Britain and in most cases it had very little to do with the self-determination of Irish indentured servants or the like.  This series isn’t incredibly harsh on the indiscretions [read: genocide of the natives/buggering of the slaves] of the FF’s, but it also doesn’t let them completely off the hook the way my middle school history teachers did.

3) The third reason to watch John Adams has something to do with those aforementioned slave-owning, land grabbing imperialists.  Turns out, John Adams wasn’t one of them.  In watching John Adams, you come to realize that it is HE (and not Washington or Jefferson, et al) that is the embodiment of the image we have of our Founding Fathers.  John Adams was the son of a self-educated farmer from Massachusetts and an illiterate mother.  John Adams was a self-made man who rose from his station in life to attend Harvard and become one of the most influential men in the country.  John Adams is the only Founding Father that never owned a slave.  Where other FF’s were brilliant and eloquent enough to talk about human rights and freedom and self-determination, but hypocritical and weak enough to own slaves, father children with them and NOT FREE THEIR OWN CHILDREN (ahem, Mr. Jefferson- care to comment?), John Adams believed so fervently that freedom was an intrinsic right that he bucked the convention of the time and picked his own damn cotton.

4) And finally- the BEST reason to watch John Adams is because it holds a lesson we could benefit from remembering today.  John Adams was an amazing man who was able to convince a lot of people that he had the answers.  So much so that they followed him into war with Britain.  He was a man of such integrity that he defended the British soldiers who fired on civilians in the Boston Massacre in a court of law.  He also fought for the freedom of slaves to be written into the Declaration of Independence.  Those principles followed him all the way through his career until…the Alien and Sedition Acts.  Long story short- the A&S Acts were the Patriot Act of its time.  It limited free speech and gave the government huge powers over its citizens’ civil liberties.  John Adams’ party- the Federalists- wrote them and John Adams signed them into law and they are the reason why:

-       John Adams lost his bid for re-election

-       His Federalist Party collapsed and never recovered

-       We DON’T learn about how John Adams chopped down a cherry tree, he doesn’t have a marble statue monument in Washington, DC, his face ain’t on a mountain in South Dakota and mostly, nobody knows who the eff he is or what he did?   

What does this teach us?  When the chips were down and shit got rough, John Adams caved to the fear mongering of his party.  Instead of defending the freshly written Constitution and Declaration of Independence, Adams allowed partisan politics to trample them like a Spaniard in Pamplona.  The Alien and Sedition Acts were used to keep people from criticizing the government, deport anyone the government wanted, arrest people without proof, make it harder for foreigners in America to become citizens and most of all- to prosecute members of the opposing party for being…well…in opposition of the Federalists…you know- traitors.  Sound familiar? 

George W. talks a great deal about freedom and liberty and the rule of law.  He speaks about the greatness of this country and our democracy with a tear in his eye and twinkle in his heart.  And then, just right after the cameras stop rolling, we realize he’s naked from the waist down behind the podium AND he’s just taken a piss on the constitution.  Let us hope history remembers George W.  Perhaps if we had learned, as middle school students, the true story of John Adams- a man of principles and ideals who sold them at the eleventh hour for political gain- we would have seen the writing on the wall when, one by one, our civil liberties were taken- quietly and deliberately- by wolves in American Flag lapel pin suits.