“she (America) goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.” – John Quincy Adams, 6th President of the United States, son of Founding Father, John Adams.
SB Veda <CALCUTTA>
As the United States marks 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, and the media debates on President Donald J. Trump’s combative speech on Mount Rushmore as well as the quality of celebrations, the question that seems to be avoided is: have the people’s representatives and the nation as a whole, fulfilled the aspirations of the Founding Fathers, and whether they would still recognize the constitutional republic they designed the America of July 4th, 2026?
The answer may not be straight forward. The men who gathered at the Federal Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 disagreed passionately on such matters as the size and scope of government, the powers of the presidency, the role of the judiciary, and the relationship between the federal government and the states. They were hardly ideological or philosophical clones. Yet beneath their disagreements, they managed to forge a profound consensus: liberty depended not upon the virtue of rulers but rather upon institutions capable of restraining them.
Their Constitution was not intended to produce efficient government. It was intended to produce accountable government. Clearly, the majority of Americans don’t believe that the institutions that the founders establish are fulfilling this goal. Poll after poll reflect this view. Most starkly, the Partnership for Public Service’s 2025 survey found that only one in three Americans regard their government to be accountable to the people it purports to represent or can be trusted to do what’s right. The men who promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, may well have been shocked at the extent to which faith in the institutions they created have eroded over time. This erosion is like more a result of the politics of the last quarter century than quarter millennium.
One of the most significant issues that stands as a contemporary example of this erosion has given rise to constitutional questions now confronting the Republic. The conundrum is wrapped up in a single name whose criminality, cruelty, greed, and moral depravity embody a new low of American citizenry: Jeffrey Epstein. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and President Donald Trump signed it into law ostensibly to reveal to the public the extent of Epstein’s crimes – at least those records which the government had in their possession and had been keeping from the public. (Epstein allegedly died by his own hand in prison while awaiting trial; hence, there is a widespread sense in the country that justice has far from been done in his case.) Despite the Legislative and Executive Branches agreeing to make the act established law and implement it, President Trump’s Department of Justice has failed to follow-through with its implementation.
The deficiency in implementing the law prompted independent journalist Katie Phang to subsequently file suit against the Federal Government, alleging that the Department of Justice (DOJ) failed to carry out the Act’s disclosure requirements. In ongoing litigation, a federal district court issued an order (preliminary, though it may be) directing Trump’s DOJ to either to comply with the statute or show cause why it should not be required to do so. The litigation is ongoing. In the meantime, the Epstein abusers remain shielded by powerful long-serving nexus of officials spanning the bureaucracy, intelligence agencies, and the military – a permanent government known collectively as the Deep State– that appears to be pulling the strings of elected leaders who despite using legislative and executive power to pass a law to reveal all of the Epstein files without protecting the alleged perpetrators, have failed to make that law a reality.
Whatever the ultimate legal outcome, the extraordinary case raises questions that extend far beyond the disclosure of a particular set of records.
If Congress passes a law with overwhelming bipartisan support, the President signs it, and a federal court concludes that the Executive Branch must either comply or justify its noncompliance, what does that reveal about the functioning of constitutional government? The issue is not simply whether a particular administration is right or wrong. Rather, it is whether the constitutional machinery designed by the Framers continues to operate as intended.
James Madison in Notes of the Debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, recorded his view that the separation of powers act as the Constitution’s principal safeguard against tyranny. The legislative, executive, and judicial branches were intended to be equal to one another, not on the assumption that they would always agree, but rather because each could act as a check the excesses of the either of the others. The role of the US Congress would be to draft the laws and pass them through a ratification process during which they would be debated in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The President was then intended to faithfully execute the laws drafted by Congress. The role of the courts was meant to resolve disputes over their meaning and constitutionality.
While the Framers of the Constitution anticipated disagreement, they could not have envisioned an era of perennial institutional impotence! By this, one is not describing inertia or partisan gridlock, which can be contended by legislation, litigation, oversight, and judicial review. On the contrary, should one branch – in this case, the DOJ functioning under the Executive Branch – disregard the lawful acts not only passed by that of another but also that which its own master, meaning the President, signed into law, without meaningful consequence, the balance envisioned by the Constitution has most likely been eviscerated. The Founders would surely have regarded such a set of circumstances and outcome with an abundance of alarm. Yet, the media, constitutional experts, and most establishment pundits have fallen short of calling the current situation a constitutional crisis. While for an overwhelming majority of Americans, this remains a core issue with polling done only a few months back revealing only 6% of Americans are satisfied with the outcome, their leaders and the fourth estate don’t seem to care.
FOREIGN POLICY
The unease of the Founding Fathers would likely have extended beyond constitutional procedure to America’s role in the world.
The Union established by these men was not conceived as a global hegemon nor would they want it to evolve into one. Their solemn and profound declaration of independence ran counter to imperial policy.
George Washington, Founding Father and first President of the United States, portrait by Gilbert Stuart – source Wikipedia
Indeed, America’s founding President and Commander of the Continental Army in the war of independence against the British, George Washington had warned against permanent foreign entanglements in his Farewell Address in 1796. John Quincy Adamsfamously argued in his Independence Day Address of 1821, that America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” Even Alexander Hamilton, the strongest advocate of executive authority among the principal Framers, envisioned American strength primarily as a means of preserving independence rather than administering an international order.
Modern American foreign policy has often reflected a strikingly different principle. The current president has espoused brute force upon the world to counter the nation’s declining military and economic dominance of the globe. This type of thinking is perhaps rooted in a document authored by the members of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a 90-page report called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” released as an open letter to then President William Jefferson Clinton in 1999. The report was controversial as it espoused the benefit of a “Pearl Harbor Style Attack” that would motivate the American people to support a war that would remove Saddam Hussein, the secular leader of Iraq and lead to a long war to reshape West Asia. The statement foreshadowed the 9/11 terrorists attacks against mainland America killing over 3000 people, the causes and details of which remain to this day, a mystery – at least according to journalists like Tucker Carlson, a former Fox News Anchor turned podcaster who produced and hosted a documentary called “The 9/11 Files” of which episode 1 is entitled “The CIA’s Secret Mission Gone Wrong”
Many believe that the blueprint for American hegemony authored by 24 neocons, 10 of which went to work in the George W. Bush Administration, prosecuting a war on Iraq even though Iraq had not attacked the United States, also included people in the PNAC statement of principles signatories such as former Bush Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the late former Vice-President Dick Cheney and war criminal and his Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and Zalmay Khalilzad, US Ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq – the 2 countries invaded during his diplomatic tenure for the G.W. Bush administration.
Writing in Der Spiegel in 2003, Jochen Bölsche claimed that Rebuilding America’s Defenses “had been developed by PNAC for Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Libby” and was “devoted to matters of ‘maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests”.
Rather posture away from his predecessor’s aggressive counter-terrorism framework, President Barack Hussein Obama, though a member of the opposing Democratic Party, escalated Republican G.W. Bush’s war doctrines. He greatly expanded targeted drone strikes in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, continuing the pursuit of the global war on terror. Keeping Bush era National Security Advisor in place, namely Robert Gates, Obama increased the US presence in Afghanistan known as “the surge.” Moreover, his drawdown of U.S. combat troops in Iraq by 2011 was governed by the Status of Forces Agreement that the Bush administration negotiated with the Iraqi government in 2008.
Campaigning on promises to protect whistleblowers, rather than protect NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Obama’s administration charged Snowden under the espionage act. He also permitted his Director of CIA, John Brennan, persuade his Attorney General, Eric Holder to reopen a Bush era FBI case against torture whistleblower John Kiriakou resulting in his imprisonment for 23 months, loss of pension, and lack of employability in his area of expertise.
United States law clearly prohibits torture United States having ratified in The Convention Against Torture in 1994, which not only prohibits torture and other mistreatment but also requires that it be investigated and punished. However, the Obama Justice Department refused to prosecute anyone for Bush-era torture, demonstrating Obama’s support for a dark lack of accountability in intelligence and military circles. This is an abject failure of the Executive and Legislative branches to enforce the law of the land, and it has deeply troubling implications. It could signal to future presidents that torture can be carried out without consequence, despite its explicit illegality.
Whereas many believed in Obama’s hopeful and optimistic campaigning in 2008 after eight dark years under the Bush administration, the same supporters felt a sense of betrayal by Obama’s continuance of Bush policies – and his hardline stance against whistleblowers despite his ardent campaign promise to strengthen whistleblower laws “to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government.” He did exactly the opposite, pursuing whistleblowers with the draconian Espionage Act, which carried with it the penalty of death. Previously, antiquated 1917 act was used only three times before Obama made it the “Thor’s hammer” of his administration.
He continued the foreign policy doctrines of neocons, bombing Syria, and orchestrating a regime change in Libya despite the reforms that Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi had implemented in giving up its WMD programs, prompting the UN to lift sanctions on his country. Gaddafi had invited foreign oil companies back into Libya, and agreed to pay $2.7 billion in compensation to the families of the 270 victims of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. While falling short of admitting to ordering the attack, it served as an official acceptance of civil liability by the Libyan state.
The EU had made a deal with Gaddafi to stop illegal migration from North Africa, which he did by using a mix of strict sea patrols in conjunction with European countries, border patrols, and securing the cooperation of local tribes to stop migrants before they could reach cities. However, despite Gaddafi’s reforms and goals of working within a rules based international order, the Obama administration’s CIA carried out a regime change that saw Gaddafi beaten and sodomized with the bayonet of one of their proxies before he succumbed to his injuries.
Since many of the migrants who streamed into Europe after Gaddafi, came to America, one could argue that Gaddafi had done more to stem the tide of illegal immigration than Obama, even with his deportations. Despite promising immigration reform, he deported so many migrants that Obama earned the nickname, “Deporter-in-Chief.”
Moreover, Obama failed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison where detainees had languished years in a framework that operated outside of United States law.
Obama’s failures and Biden’s support of wars in the middle east and between Russia and Ukraine, Trump’s rise to power on an “America First” platform, ending forever wars, and gaining control of the country’s borders. The public saw no difference between neocon Republicans and neocon Democrats. Soon traditional Republicans and centrists Democrats were cast as “the Uniparty” for their lack policy differences.
Trump, though campaigning against the neocons, by the February, 2026, seemed utterly controlled by them. Something deep within the bowels of institutional Washington had tightened their grip on the Presidency and Congress.
Neocons argue that American leadership underpins international stability and deters authoritarian aggression. Critics describe the same policies as forms of neo-imperialism or neoconservative expansionism that exceed the constitutional and philosophical limits envisioned by the Republic’s founders.
The Framers would almost certainly have debated these developments vigorously. Some might have viewed American global influence as the natural consequence of commercial and military success. Others would likely have warned that an empire abroad inevitably reshapes liberty at home. History suggests the latter concern would have seemed prescient to them.
The Founders inherited a profound suspicion of concentrated power having fought a revolution against an empire they believed had accumulated too much of it. They assumed that standing armies, permanent emergencies, secrecy, and expansive executive discretion posed dangers to republican government. Those concerns resonate in contemporary debates over surveillance, emergency powers, and the national security state.
When Dwight D. Eisenhower, former Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II and President of the United States not long after the second world war warned of the “military-industrial complex” as being a dangerous confluence of power and commerce that could become an existential threat to democracy, his successortook heed of his advice. President John Fitzgerald President’s speech on the danger of secret societies and his open expression of his desire to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds” may well have contributed to his assassination.
Long dismissed as a fringe theory, in 2023, a Gallup poll revealed that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that JFK’s assassination was the act of a conspiracy, including the possibility of being orchestrated by intelligence agents with support from criminal elements like the mafia. Such distrust of official narratives has never been at an all time high. It is worth noting that in 1979, the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations concluded President Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”
The Founding Fathers would have found the notion of an internal coup by parts of the military-industrial complex including agents of the government, itself, to be gravely disturbing and antithetical to the principles upon which their new nation were founded.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
The Founding Fathers may well have become concerned over the increasingly repressive information regime instituted under successive administrations. The First Amendment reflected not only a commitment to free expression but also an expectation that a diverse and independent press would serve as a check upon government. The importance of a free press has been central to democracy, for the institution is premised on the notion that the electorate are informed – and not just sheep to be shepherded to one side or another. In the eighteenth century, newspapers were many, fiercely partisan, and often locally owned. No handful of corporations could plausibly shape the information consumed by most Americans. Not so, today.
Today’s media landscape is vastly different. Ownership has become increasingly concentrated, while digital platforms have transformed the distribution of information. The result is a public sphere in which unprecedented access to information coexists with unprecedented opportunities for algorithmic amplification, political polarization, misinformation, and corporate influence.
The Founders almost certainly would have defended robust freedom of speech while simultaneously questioning whether a marketplace of ideas functions effectively when ownership and distribution become concentrated in relatively few hands. They would likely have recognized that formal censorship is not the only force capable of narrowing public debate.
YOUNG AMERICA’S EMERGING IDENTITY CONTRASTING WITH TODAY’S CONSUMERIST AMERICA
Benjamin Franklin, portrait by Joseph Duplessis – source Wikipedia
Perhaps the greatest surprise awaiting the Founders would concern American identity itself.
The intellectual culture of the early Republic was remarkably curious. The famed inventor/statesman Benjamin Franklin corresponded with scholars across Europe and followed developments in science and comparative religion.Franklin’s advocacy for cultural and religious coexistence was far ahead of his time, setting an enduring foundational precedent for the religious freedom and cultural pluralism enshrined in the United States Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson amassed one of the largest libraries in America, studying history, philosophy, languages, and legal systems from numerous civilizations. Jefferson championed the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (drafted 1777, passed 1786), which served as the blueprint for the First Amendment of the US Constitution. In his 1821 Autobiography, he explicitly argued that this liberty must protect “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
John Adams explored classical and comparative political thought. Collectively, the educated elite of the young Republic exhibited an appetite for ideas that extended well beyond the Anglo-American tradition, now touted as the foundation of American identity.
Among those interests was a growing awareness of Eastern philosophy. Through European translations and scholarly works then becoming available, leading Americans encountered Hindu philosophy, aspects of the Upanishads, and broader religious traditions of India. Their understanding was incomplete by modern standards, yet their willingness to engage intellectually with civilizations outside Europe reflected a confidence that American identity could be enriched through inquiry rather than diminished by it.
Along with his friend and fellow Founding Father John Adams, Jefferson was part of the generation of Enlightenment thinkers curious about ancient Indian texts. He took a noted interest in Indian literary works, such as the classical Sanskrit play Shakuntala by Kalidasa.
This intellectual openness was itself revolutionary. As they fought to be free of their British masters, the leadership of young America let in a light that enabled them to see themselves in a fundamentally new way. Holding up that mirror they could see not only what they had become but also what they could be.
The Founders sought to build a nation that consciously departed from the political assumptions of its colonial past. They borrowed from Britain where they believed British institutions worked, but they also drew upon Roman republicanism, the Enlightenment, classical Greece, natural law, and ideas from a widening world of scholarship. America was, in many respects, an experiment in intellectual synthesis and scholarly multiculturalism, a concept very different from the tokenism inherent in diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Rather, American outward gaze combined with existential introspection, formed many of the core principles of the constitution.
John Adams – source Wikipedia
Given the Founding Fathers’ intellectual fascination with Eastern thought, the inalienable right enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that every American has the inalienable right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” whether consciously or subconsciously, may have been derived from the Sanskrit sloka, “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” – may all people, everywhere, be happy and free. An argument could well be framed that the two phrases as so close that they can be interpreted as one and the same.
2026 – BACK TO THE FUTURE?
Contemporary debates over national identity often move in varying directions, often one of them is backwards. One cannot deny that such movement afoot in the United States.
Rapid demographic change, cultural transformation that question fundamental American social institutions identification such as marriage and gender, increased migration, and persistent concerns about illegal immigration, have combined to renew interest in America’s colonial and Anglo-Protestant heritage. For many Americans, this reflects a desire to preserve civic traditions, constitutional principles, and historical continuity. Others view the same movement as an exclusionary response to an increasingly diverse society.
The Founding Fathers would probably have found both perspectives familiar but argued that they are not mutually exclusive. Weaving the best of historical tradition innovative thinking may chart a path forward. It would require intellectual agility, forgiveness of past transgressions based on historical exploitation, and evolution of identity that moves beyond the pursuit of money – which has come to symbolize the happiness identified as the end goal of pursuits of Americans.
The Founding Fathers believed that republican government required a shared civic culture, yet they also understood that America was continually becoming something new. Their Revolution itself was an act of rejecting inherited political identities in favour of creating a distinct national experiment. They might therefore ask whether modern debates are ultimately about preserving constitutional principles or preserving particular ethnic and cultural inheritances. Those are not necessarily the same thing.
Two hundred and fifty years after Americans declared their independence, the United States remains a nation of extraordinary resilience and, at times, inexplicable contradiction. It has survived civil war, economic collapse, world wars, social upheaval, and political realignment while preserving constitutional government.
Whether it continues to do so depends less upon the wisdom of individual leaders than upon the willingness of institutions to respect both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. It also depends on whether the will of the people can find utterance and action in the functioning of those institutions.
The Founding Fathers and Framers understood that no constitutional system could preserve liberty by itself. Laws would matter only if faithfully executed. Courts would matter only if their judgments were respected. Congress would matter only if it defended the powers entrusted to it rather than yielding them through habit or convenience or influence.
They would likely regard today’s America not necessarily as failed experiment, nor as one that is as constitutionally firm as they had intended, but as a republic in a state of creative, commercial, and political tension. They would recognize many of the disagreements that animate modern politics, for they had many of them themselves. But they may well anticipate the undemocratic forces of money, oligarchy, and concentration of power from which the new nation of the United States had through the barrel of a gun, extricated itself.
What would concern them most is not that the branches of government disagree, but that any one branch might become so dominant that the others cease to function as effective constitutional counterweights – or more concerning still, that corruption in all branches, would corrode the very foundation of the nation.
These were the issues they fought to have the right to determine for themselves in 1776 and sought to resolve on paper in 1787. At two hundred and fifty, Americans have yet to embody the dream of their Founding Fathers, the albatross of greed hanging around the necks of so many of America’s contemporary leaders. It has come to a point when many ordinary citizens are giving up. Yielding to corrupting forcers would be a reversal of the revolutionary war, for the will to continue quiet revolutions of thinking, drawing America back to its foundational documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, may well determine whether the American experiment endures or implodes upon itself like a nuclear detonation.
The Global Calcuttan Magazine 
