I’ve been watching Congress recently with stifled bemusement. The changes in positions — from sequestration to immigration to Obamacare — on both sides of the spectrum caused me to remember something John Adams wrote to James Warren a year before the Declaration of Independence was signed. We tend to think of the Continental Congresses of an August Body of men, determined in unanimity for the betterment of the country, united by a common and distant foe.
Nope.
I think Mr. Adams’s words could with some minute modification aptly be ascribed to our modern federal legislature.
“These opinions of Some Colonies which are founded I think in their Wishes and passions, their Hopes and Fears, rather than in Reason and Evidence will give a whimsical Cast to the Proceedings of this Congress. You will see a strange Oscillation between love and hatred, between War and Peace — Preparations for War and Negociations for Peace.”
This coming from perhaps the most honest member of that same Congress.
