News media headlines tend to emphasize conflict, controversy, and crisis. Why? Because negative stories attract more attention. They sell. As the old saying goes, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Even the weather gets a headline if it is about a blizzard, torrential rain, or extreme heat. Beautiful spring days may get a mention, but not much.
Take a look at headlines in newspapers or online. Bipartisan successes and collaboration are seldom noticed, but in the last year we have been inundated with stories about the controversy of immigrants coming into the country illegally; protestors tearing down statues; rioters destroying public and private property; legislators leaving their posts (even the state) to kill a quorum and prohibit the legislature from conducting business; complaints of unelected “deep state” bureaucrats working against the elected president’s agenda; military being used against our own citizens; blanket presidential pardons to rebels/insurrectionists; ugly, even “evil” campaigns; and fears that our form of government is facing existential threats – that our Constitution is not working.
Whew! What a list! Take a few minutes and check out headlines wherever you get your news. It’s all there. In fact, I encourage you to search newspaper headlines, pamphlets, and letters written in the U.S. in the late 1700s and early 1800s. You will find all of these issues there, too!
During President John Adams’s administration in the 1790’s, Congress enacted the first deportation law. Since our founding, immigration has been a divisive issue; the concerns on both sides the same as they were then – jobs, culture, crime, humanitarian concerns, and national security.
Statues have been violently toppled since at least July 9, 1776, when the newly adopted Declaration of Independence was read aloud to General George Washington’s troops on the common in lower Manhattan. A mob armed with axes, hammers, and ladders pulled down the 4,000-pound gilded lead equestrian statue of George III. That was only the first.
Before, during, and after the Revolution, homes and offices of British officials, loyalists, and those suspected of being “in the opposition” were damaged or destroyed. During the debate over ratification of the Constitution in Pennsylvania, delegates opposing the Constitution hid in their homes or boarding houses to prohibit the convention from achieving a quorum and voting.
John Adams was not the first president to struggle against members of his administration who undercut his agenda. His own Secretaries of State, Treasury, and War owed more allegiance to outsider Alexander Hamilton than to Adams and often contradicted or weakened Adams’s policies. President George Washington had endured his Secretary of State’s opposition to his foreign policy direction by trying to block a major presidential initiative – the Jay Treaty – while serving as the president’s chief diplomat. He believed Edmund Randolph had been coordinating with a foreign power – France- to block the Jay Treaty. Moreover, Randolph compromised the president’s cabinet unity and confidentiality.
In 1794, an insurgency erupted in western Pennsylvania when several thousand farmers and distillers refused to pay the “whiskey tax” imposed by Congress three years earlier. After 500 men attacked the fortified home of the tax inspector, President Washington personally rode at the head of a 13,000-man army to suppress the insurrection. Most of the insurgents fled, but the few who were apprehended, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death by hanging were later fully pardoned by President Washington.
As far as nasty campaigns and fears of a collapsing democracy, 2026 has nothing over the election in 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson…or several subsequent elections. Alexander Hamilton despaired that “in vain was the collected wisdom of America convened at Philadelphia.” Benjamin Rush’s anxiety was apparent in 1805 when he lamented that he “felt shame” and sometimes wished he “could erase my name from the Declaration of Independence.” Even Washington became disillusioned with the rise of political parties and partisanship, fearing the republic “must, inevitably be torn asunder.”
You might say, “it’s déjà vu all over again,” or agree with Solomon that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Or simply that history repeats itself. You might even say, “So what? What’s the point?’
The point is simply this. Understanding that history seems to repeat itself is less about predicting the future and more about understanding human nature. Technologies change, leaders change, institutions change. But recurring patterns emerge because people respond to fear, ambition, scarcity, hope, power, and uncertainty in familiar ways. People centuries ago wrestled with many of the same problems and questions we do – how to govern, how to live well, how to balance freedom and security, how to deal with change. Wisdom comes from learning from the past and becoming better for understanding it.
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