Editor's note
Andrea Neal, formerly editorial page editor of the Indianapolis Star, is a history teacher and the author of three books, including “Road Trip: A Pocket History of Indiana” and “Pence: The Path to Power.” This essay has been adapted from a talk she gave to Indiana groups preparing for the recent 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
If only George Washington could see us now … what would he say?
“Didn’t I warn you that political parties are a bad idea?”
“Have you forgotten my advice about avoiding foreign entanglements?”
“Just look at your credit cards. $34 trillion in outstanding debt. Apparently you ignored that part of my Farewell Address that urged you to pay your bills quickly so as not to burden the next generation.”
Yet here we are – so politically divided that an assassination attempt of our former president surprised almost no one.
So entangled in global affairs – we’ve committed 175 billion dollars in Ukraine-related aid and, according to the Stacker newswire, are involved in more than a dozen shadows wars from Afghanistan to Yemen.
My latest check of the national debt clock put it at 34.9 trillion and counting. We have burdened the next generation beyond anything George Washington could have imagined.
What would Washington and our other founding fathers have to say?
That was the question — and premise — behind the publication: Indiana Mandate, A Return to Founding Principles, An Agenda for the 2020s. I worked on this book with Craig Ladwig, executive director of the Indiana Policy Review Foundation, with the intention of examining current issues — local, state and national — from the lens of the founding generation.
With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence right around the corner, we hoped to get people talking about the many ways this country has strayed from the principles of limited government, rule of law, individual rights and economic freedom that have been the foundation of our country since 1776. And we asked the question: Can we return to those founding principles before it’s too late?
What is the evidence that the United States — in many ways — has lost its way? Consider the following:
On a global Index of Economic Freedom, the United States ranks 25th – trailing such countries as Lithuania, Cyprus, Chile and the United Arab Emirates. The 2024 Index, conducted by the Heritage Foundation, looked at economic policies and conditions in 184 sovereign countries from July 1, 2022, through June 30, 2023, and ranked the countries on a 100-point scale. It found that the average global score for economic freedom is the lowest it has been since 2001 — at 58.6.
What’s notable is the continuing decline of the United States, whose score dropped to 70.1, its lowest level ever in the 30-year history of the Index. According to Heritage, the primary reason for a decline in economic freedom here is excessive government spending, which has resulted in mounting deficit and debt burdens. These threaten the quality of life of our children and grandchildren. Placing in the top three in the ranking are Singapore, Switzerland and Ireland.
Political freedom is likewise on the decline globally and in the United States. A ranking conducted annually by Freedom House looks at political rights and civil liberties on a 100-point scale. The organization reports that “Global freedom declined for the 18th consecutive year in 2023. The scope and scale of deterioration were extensive, affecting one-fifth of the world’s population. Almost everywhere, the downturn in rights was driven by attacks on pluralism — the peaceful coexistence of people with different political ideas, religions or ethnic identities — that harmed elections and sowed violence.”
The United States registered a score of 83, down from 86 prior to the pandemic, and behind such countries as Uruguay, the Bahamas, Slovenia and Portugal. Now, Freedom House has a bit of a left-wing ideological bias, so I disagree with them on the culprits behind the U.S. decline but I certainly agree that our political freedom is under attack. Political division and discord in this country have resulted in suppression of views, especially of conservatives and Christians, an increase in political violence, and concern for election integrity. And the Justice Department has been weaponized for political purposes.
What can we do about these trends?
The Indiana Policy Review believes the place to start is educating ourselves. We the people and our elected officials need to understand what the issues are and how we can apply founding principles to them. And some of these issues are complicated.
We started by picking 75 topics that are of concern today and researching what if anything the founders might have said about them. In some cases, there is clear and convincing evidence of what they thought. On some issues, we had to extrapolate. And in some, we stretched a bit in order to include them. It was a fascinating exercise and one I think all policy minded people should do before staking out a position on anything. After establishing the founders’ views, we offered context and data for the issue in today’s times. And whenever possible we suggested actions steps policymakers should take to take into consideration founding principles.
Let me share some examples.
Let’s start with the economy, which voters consistently indicate is a top issue heading into the 2024 elections. On many of the economic issues on which Republicans and Democrats disagree, the founders’ philosophy is indisputable. They opposed excessive taxation.
While their primary concern in the revolutionary era was taxation without representation, they understood that government should tax only for urgent need. George Washington wrote, "... towards the payment of debts there must be revenue … to have revenue there must be taxes … (and) … no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant." Today, the combined rate of federal, state and local taxes on the average middle class wage earner is approaching 50 percent … talk about unpleasant. As Craig Ladwig noted, that’s a rate that would make even King George blush. The solution is self-evident. Government must spend less in order to tax less. The public has to demand discipline from our elected representatives.
The founders were firm in their support of property rights. Thomas Jefferson borrowed heavily from John Locke’s second treatise in which Locke said that even in a state of nature, where no government exists, “No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” Jefferson’s wording transformed Locke’s thought into “life liberty and happiness,” suggesting that happiness and property are related. George Washington said, “Freedom and property are inseparable. You can’t have one without the other.”
The founders warned against incurring government debt that couldn’t be paid off quickly. Washington referred to it as “ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.”
The founders opposed earmarks – those bills that direct tax dollars to specific projects in lawmakers home districts. James Monroe said federal money should be limited to “great national works only, since if it were unlimited it would be liable to abuse and might be productive of evil.” Did you know that in January 2021 Congress brought back earmarks after a decade long moratorium? In 2023, Congress passed 7,396 earmarks costing $26 billion. Notably and worthy of kudos, Indiana ranked near the bottom in pork per capita at $5.70. Alaska ranked at the top at $668. Some would contend Indiana’s congressional representatives are failing to get Indiana its fair share. But this should not be a competition to fleece the taxpayers. The only solution: Ban earmarks altogether.
In sharp contrast to the national government, Indiana’s lawmakers are conscientious about spending and debt, our constitution places limits on debt, and our laws protecting private property are commendable. However, there are threats aplenty at the state level to our fiscal freedom. Economic development policies, as one example, distort market forces by picking winners and losers. This was one of the few issues on which the Republican gubernatorial candidates actually disagreed in the primary campaigns.
Economic development sounds worthy. The stated purpose of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and related municipal and regional agencies is to grow the economy and create good paying jobs. Their chief strategy, however, is to offer tax relief or subsidies to certain types of business ventures - from hotels to convention centers. We taxpayers fund all sorts of things that benefit some but not all — such as Lucas Oil Stadium where the Indianapolis Colts play. Indianapolis taxpayers are right now helping to finance the new Signia by Hilton Hotel downtown because the project couldn’t get loans from the private sector.
The example that you all are familiar with and that has been in the news is the LEAP Lebanon Innovation District. At first blush, it sounds fantastic. It’s been billed as the economy of the future. 9,000-plus acres with advanced manufacturing, ag-bio science, defense, high tech logistics. The IEDC, which by the way is a quasi-public agency that receives minimal legislative review, has committed almost a billion dollars in tax dollars to it.
The case can be made – and was strongly made by Eric Doden and Brad Chambers in the GOP primary — that this will benefit Indiana’s economy, employ thousands, lead to technological advances etc. But what would the Founders say about it?
I think they’d object. The First Congress rejected a bill to loan money to a glassmaker as unconstitutional favoritism. In a debate during the second congress, South Carolina Rep. Hugh Williamson opposed a bill to pay a bounty to New England cod fishermen because it sought to – “gratify one part of the union by oppressing the other.”
We hear the term crony capitalism thrown around a lot. It’s something we need to be concerned about because it limits economic freedom. The founders would point out that crony capitalism caused the Boston Tea Party. Colonists objected to the Tea Act of 1773 because it granted the East India Company a monopoly on tea exported to the colonies, exempted the company from the export tax and guaranteed it a “drawback” or (refund) of duties owed on surplus quantities of tea in its possession. The tea act benefited some at the expense of all.
Let’s move from the economy to election integrity. If the Indiana Policy Review were to prioritize one issue above all others in "Indiana Mandate," it would be election integrity. If we cannot trust the accuracy and fairness of our electoral process, our republic is sunk.
The latest survey I could find on this was CNN’s from August 2023, when 69 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters questioned the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election. That’s a lot of “election deniers.” Many in the Republican Party are saying the only solution is to beat the Democrats at their own game – to do everything possible to maximize early voting and mail-in ballots so the GOP’s lead can’t be eroded by “middle of the night” vote-counting shenanigans. Elon Musk just committed 45 million-dollars a month to a political action committee that will focus on early voting efforts.
What would the founders say?
The earliest elections occurred by voice vote or paper ballot, and — as today — fraud was a concern. Candidates greeted voters at the polls, often offering food and drink to opponents as well as supporters. Elections in the early republic sometimes lasted two or three days to accommodate those traveling long distances to the courthouse. The idea of month-long early voting periods or mail-in ballots, however, would defy the founders’ understanding of “election day” as a patriotic and social affair that brought citizens together for what Samuel Adams called “one of the most solemn trusts in human society.”
Absentee and early voting are modern inventions. Absentee voting began during the Civil War so soldiers could participate in the 1864 presidential election, but it wasn’t until 1921 that a state — Louisiana — enacted the first absentee law. California was the first state to offer absentee voting for any reason in the 1970s, and Texas offered early in-person voting starting in the late 1980s.
This trend continued and accelerated during the Covid pandemic. In 2016, two in five ballots cast for the general election were early, absentee or by mail. In 2020, 43 states allowed early voting with windows ranging from a few days to almost 50. In Indiana, early voting starts 28 days prior to the election.
Early voting sounds democratic but creates a huge risk of fraud and ballot damage, misplacement or accidental destruction. As observed by political commentator Deroy Murdock, “Making early ballots disappear from overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican precincts could throw elections. Even if nothing inappropriate happens, as ballots gather dust, they generate suspicions of monkey business, especially in skin-tight races. Such doubts corrode confidence in institutions and officials.”
Early voting is changing the fundamental nature of campaigning, making it more expensive and thus more likely to benefit incumbents, who have budgets, staff and tactical ability to conduct get-out-the-early-vote efforts. Further, early voting changes the very nature of the election season. From Labor Day until early November, candidates have the opportunity to appeal to the people, and citizens have the opportunity to debate. According to constitutional law professors Eugene Kontorovich and John McGinnis, “The integrity of that space is broken when some citizens cast their ballots as early as 46 days before the election, as some states allow. A lot can happen in those 46 days. Early voters are, in essence, asked a different set of questions from later ones; they are voting with a different set of facts.”
Indiana can be a leader here. Under the Elections Clause of the Constitution, state legislatures hold the power to determine time, place and manner of federal as well as state elections. Any effort to address the chaotic hodgepodge of voting rules and procedures that exist around the country needs to begin at the state level.
Indiana lawmakers could and should return to single-day voting on Election Day, expand voting day hours (6 a.m. to 9 p.m.), increase the number of polling sites and continue to offer absentee ballots to Hoosiers with legitimate reasons they cannot vote in person at the polls. Indiana has the opportunity to create a model law that restores the integrity of Election Day but preserves the opportunity for all eligible citizens to vote.
At the federal level, we should make Election Day the most important national holiday, rivaling Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. Countries that do this have higher voter participation rates than the United States.
Turning to education, another issue that continues to be at the top of voter priority lists. Here’s what is absolutely clear: The Founders were not worried about college or career readiness, which are the obsession of politicians and business leaders today. They saw the primary purpose of education as “civic” — as unifying. as essential to character development. They understood that the ability to read, write and think is essential if citizens are to take part in representative democracy.
That thought was written into the Declaration by Thomas Jefferson: Governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” and it was assumed education made that consent possible. It was never suggested that the government order students to attend certain schools, and the wording in subsequent state constitutions made clear that the establishment of public schools was for regions where schools had not yet been established.
The Founders considered civic education essential to continued good government. In his Farewell Address, George Washington said, “A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of our country.”
At that we have failed abysmally. We laugh when the late-night comedians air “man on the street” interviews showing just how ignorant Americans are of their history. I watched one on Prager U’s channel the other morning conducted at the National Mall. When was the Declaration of Independence signed? 1904. To what political party did Lincoln belong? Democratic. In a recent Annenberg survey, less than half of Americans were able to name all three branches of government.
To our great detriment, we have lost the Founders understanding – that the new country would remain free only ifs people were education in good government and history – and we need to get that understanding back.
As a side note, the Founders were all-in on phonics. Noah Webster, best known as the author of the dictionary, noted that “every child in America … should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice.” Webster’s “blue-backed spellers,” used during the 18th and 19th centuries, taught children to spell and read by learning explicitly the relationship between letters and sounds. The Indiana General Assembly has been trying to get “science of reading” back into the schools, but it hasn’t been easy because of resistance from the education schools and teachers unions.
Moving on to the administrative state, the bureaucracy, the swamp. The Founders would be aghast at where power lies in our country today – it lies with executive branch agencies and employees. They would surely be in favor of Vivek Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut the federal workforce by 75 percent.
The Founders created a system of checks and balances with separation of powers to ensure no one branch overpowered the others.Their writings, however, make clear that they considered the legislative branch the most important because it was elected by the people. It’s horrifying to report that executive branch agencies enact more policies each year than Congress itself.
In 2023, the Biden administration issued 3,018 regulations with the force of law, compared with 65 laws passed by Congress during the same period. This directly relates to the economic freedom rankings I mentioned earlier. The National Association of Manufacturers reports that the cost to the economy of regulatory compliance exceeded 3 trillion dollars in 2022. For a typical U.S. business, regulations cost about 19 percent of payroll expenditures. This system has been decades in the making and will take time to solve, but Congress can start with a simple accountability measure. Require lawmakers to vote all major rules into law. Congress should feel empowered in this regard by the Supreme Court’s recent, welcome decision to overturn the Chevron precedent, which had essentially allowed federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer with almost no oversight.
Let me finish by sharing a few of things that surprised and delighted me about the Founders.
As you might imagine "Indiana Mandate" does not buy into the validity of climate change. The Founders would not have supported President Biden’s effort to shut down coal plants or to phase out fossil fuels; they would have agreed with the philosophy of energy independence as a matter of national security.
That said, they liked trees, and would probably approve of tree-planting and tree conservation as the best method of carbon capture, which reduces air pollution.
British historian Andrea Wulf, in her book "Founding Gardeners," credits James Madison, the father of the Constitution, with being a forefather of the American environmental movement. “Madison feared that if society lived off nature at the current rate it would eventually destroy it and that man had to return to nature what man took from it,” Wulf writes. Notably, Madison’s residence in Montpelier, Va., maintained hundreds of acres of untamed forest, which he saw as a treasured asset. The fourth president demonstrated his affinity for forests into retirement when he protested unnecessary logging in an 1818 address to the Agricultural Society of Albermarle County, admonishing farmers for “the injudicious and excessive destruction of timber and fire wood.”
The Founders would not have supported subsidies of electric vehicles, but they probably would have been fascinated by the technology. They were noted tinkerers, Ben Franklin’s experiments with lightning being just one example.
For that reason, they might think ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence are pretty cool – but surely they would worry about their use in K-12 classrooms before students acquire the necessary skills of reading, writing and critical thinking.
Finally, an issue of great importance to the next generations. They would tell the Indiana legislature: Do not follow the crowd. Do not legalize marijuana. They would tell the Biden administration: Treat fentanyl as a public health emergency. Dr. Benjamin Rush, founding father and founder of the first medical school in the United States, warned his colleagues that overconsumption of distilled spirits negatively affected industry, health and morals. His then novel theories about alcoholism and addiction have all been proved correct by subsequent research.
The founders of our country knew what they were doing when they created the United States of America. They had insight into almost every issue confronting us today. We talk in "Indiana Mandate" about such diverse issues as the autism epidemic, vaccine mandates, Midwest exceptionalism, term limits, wind power and abortion.
Our country is on the verge of squandering a great inheritance. Let us honor the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by reclaiming their wisdom, their political philosophy, and their founding principles.
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