Caffeinated Politics

We have red, white, and blue bunting on our staircase that goes to the second floor. James is an amateur vexillologist and has a series of flags flying at our home that highlight the history of the national celebration taking place in ten days. Doubtless, we will light the grill and enjoy fireworks with friends. But with all the recollections about our past, and what the Fourth of July means, we also recognize the clouds that hang heavily over our land. I suggest that if the Founding Fathers were somehow able to join us for a brat, potato salad, and chips, and check in on what they risked everything to create, they would be alarmed and deeply concerned about the United States in 2026.

Because the one thing those well-read and serious-minded people feared was what would happen if populists ran amok, and a tyrant or an autocratic personality rose to power. They talked about and wrote about it. They baked the answers to such a threat into the Constitution. So, they would be stunned to learn that there is an ongoing allowance for Donald Trump as he openly acts as if the presidency is above the law and insists, in various ways, that loyalty to him outranks loyalty to the Constitution. If the Founders looked in on us right now, they would not be subtle about their reaction. They’d be terrified.

James Madison, the quiet genius who practically invented the architecture of checks and balances, warned in Federalist 47 that “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” When the legislative branch kneels and fails to follow through on oversight of the executive branch, or refuses to abide by the appropriations process for allocating and spending money, Madison would hear the exact alarm bell he installed ringing at full volume.

George Washington, the one man who could have been king and refused, would be aghast at any leader who encourages political violence or treats the military as a personal instrument. Washington spent his entire presidency proving that America was not a monarchy in disguise. He’d see the modern flirtations with Trump’s autocratic behavior and feel the cold dread of déjà vu.

But here’s the part that would truly chill them. Not the chaos, or the bluster, or the insults, or even the lies. What would keep the Founders fretting furiously is the citizenry’s numbness. The sense among about 30% of the nation that constitutional norms are optional, that institutions are disposable, and that loyalty to a leader matters more than loyalty to the country. The Founders knew republics don’t collapse in a single dramatic moment. They erode slowly when people decide the rule of law is negotiable.

In 2025, Kamala Harris said on the Stephen Colbert Show, “…..what I did not predict was the capitulation. I didn’t predict that people would roll over for this president… I believed that on some level, there should be many who consider themselves to be guardians of our system and our democracy, who just capitulated. And I didn’t see that coming”.

The Founders would look at the rhetoric about “retribution,” the insistence that elections are illegitimate if one loses them, the casual and not-so-causal threats against opponents, and they would see the very danger they designed the system to prevent. They would not shrug it off as “just politics” or that “is just the way he talks”. They would not pretend the Constitution is a suggestion. They would not tell us to calm down and enjoy the fireworks.

I find the Founders and the era they lived in to be truly worthy of our attention. So, in my folksy way, let me state it the way I believe history would show them reacting to Trump.

Jefferson would be firing off blistering letters. Adams would be thundering from the rooftops, red-faced and angry. Hamilton would be publishing pamphlets faster than the ink could dry. Washington would give that quiet, disappointed look that could level a grown man, but wouldn’t yell as his teeth gave him fits.

But here is the thing. They all, in their own way, would be united in stressing to us that our republic survives only if we defend it. They gave us a fragile experiment. And they expected that this country would refuse to hand power to anyone who believes the Constitution is an obstacle rather than a guide. But then an element of the nation forgot their civics lessons, or more likely never learned them.

So, the Founders would sternly remind the rest of us to remember what they feared. And then they’d ask us to act like citizens worthy of the republic they entrusted to us.

That is the lesson we need to think about on July 4th.