Reflection and Choice

In this month’s Atlantic, acclaimed Irish author, Fintan O’Toole, wrote an essay titled, “What the Founders Would Say Now”.

The essay reads like a juror would when proclaiming innocence or guilt in a courtroom. O’Toole believes that his bias, even while beginning his essay by discussing how preposterous it is to assume one could have any idea of what “the Founders believed”, is probably more accurate than others.

And he finds the modern Republic - Guilty of disappointing the Founders. O’Toole manages to provide a compelling case. And in an admirably subtle condescension aimed at both the reader and the Founders. In summary, the Founders would be underwhelmed by today’s Republic for both moral and amoral reasons.

O’Toole skillfully extracts quotes from The Federalist Papers, Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, and other sources to support each of his claims. O’Toole succeeds in convincing his readers that the Republic has violently fallen from grace. But that’s not exactly news to most Americans. In fact, this corrosion started long ago; some believe it began with JFK’s assassination. We are only recently seeing cankerous sores emerge.

In his analysis, however, he violates core principles that the Founders would not have appreciated. In “Federalist No. 10”, Madison writes that, “…Besides the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other adds a fresh embarrassment.”

O’Toole certainly proves Madison’s point. Fresh embarrassment is achieved here. By obfuscating many complex topics, he collects a bucket of rage-bait for his typical readers and sprinkles it liberally throughout his shotgun blast verdicts. But little analysis is offered on what the Founders would think of the causes behind the current situation.

For example, lamenting President Trump’s comments on how the press is “the enemy of the people”, O’Toole seems to gloss over the evidence that leads Americans to believe such a statement. Oversights and erros, such as the Hunter Biden Laptop Scandal or COVID-19 vaccine promises or “Russia-gate”. O’Toole presents the President’s comments as though the comments alone ignited distrust and backlash against the press.

Identifying current leadership’s crude comments regarding journalism is certainly fair game. However, entirely skipping the causes leading to this malaise seems to imply the Founders would only judge the snapshot, not the context.

O’Toole mentions the Founders believed in a “republic of readers”. The Founders’ education, from Jefferson’s classical training to Franklin’s self-taught brilliance, enabled the creation of their exquisite Constitution. They’d see today’s 54% below 6th-grade reading levels, according to PIAAC, as a failure of the ‘enlightened citizenry’ Jefferson demanded in his Letter to Richard Price. Of course, the Republic is doomed, they would say.

O’Toole further leaves tremendous evidence on how his beliefs have colored this essay. Interestingly, O’Toole is careful not to utter the word “aristocracy”; he prefers “oligarchy”. One wonders if billionaires were expending their capital in the “correct” way, how quickly O’Toole would be willing to exchange those words.

Finally, the discussion on Church and State was another brilliant literary drive-by. (Make no mistake, Mr. O’Toole is a superb craftsman.) Yes, the Founders were clear that they feared the power of the Church over citizens and the State. Indeed, O’Toole provides an excellent Franklin quote to support his claim.

Yet, it is hard to believe that O’Toole would support the idea that the Founders envisioned a nation with no religious guidance. Or that every time the word “God” was produced in those documents, it was merely symbolic. Separation of Church and State is not an argument for no Church.

That acknowledged, the most glaring issue is that, of all the Founders, O’Toole gracefully avoids extrapolating what the true driving force of the Republic, Alexander Hamilton, would believe. “Federalist No. 68” certainly touches on O’Toole’s “oligarchy” concerns, yet we read no acknowledgment of its contents.

My concern with O’Toole’s essay is that he wants a summary verdict from his readers. Not a thorough investigation of his claims. But those nuances would get in the way of his desired judgment. So, his readers are robbed of the deeper and more enlightening analysis.

At the end of the day, I agree with many of the verdicts O’Toole has rendered, for different reasons. In the spirit of our Founders, I would ask that we give weight to complexity and demand that professional writers and thinkers quickly provide breadth into their arguments. Readers deserve a thorough and objective autopsy. Especially when undertaking an essay projecting the Founder’s beliefs.

O’Toole’s analysis would earn him a free bottle of Chateau Petrus with the Judge after the trial of our Republic. But I would have preferred that he developed a relationship with the defendant’s lawyer, enough to share a glass of whiskey with him—and his readers.