just a victim of your fear

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." - Thomas Jefferson

I finally saw the first couple episodes of HBO's John Adams miniseries. It's pretty great so far; this may be Paul Giamatti's finest role yet. The supporting cast is fantastic as well, especially Laura Linney as Abigail Adams, David Morse as George Washington, and Tom Wilkinson as Benjamin Franklin. The show is a good reminder that our founding fathers did not start out seeking a war for independence, but to legally and peacefully secure their rights. Only when all avenues for a peaceful revolution were closed did they resort to violent insurrection. It is also a great reminder than American success was not a foregone conclusion; in fact the odds were strongly against it. I haven't read historian David McCullough's biography on John Adams that the miniseries is based on, but his book 1776 is a great study on the first year of the war.

While watching this show, I cannot help but wonder what our founding fathers would think of our country now. Unlike modern day leaders, these men were truly risking their lives by going to war; failure would have meant certain death for treason. It was a risk they were willing to take for the sake of liberty. The possibility of losing their property, their families, and their lives was less important to them than living without their naturally, unalienable rights. Meanwhile, today we are content to sit idly by as our government gradually strips away our rights and civil liberties under the guise of protecting us from terrorism. I cannot help but believe that the men who founding our nation are rolling in their graves as the government they created passes legislation that allows it to spy on its own innocent citizens. What is worse is that we are so seized by fear that we have decided that safety is more important to us than freedom. It's sad that we have strayed so far from the beliefs of our forefathers.

(Justin Hall had a good post about his thoughts on John Adams which you can read here)