Independence Day

Tomorrow, Americans celebrate the 235th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America, July 4, 1776. Two hundred and thirty five years during which they built a new vision of the relationship between the citizen and the state’s powers, management and governance, along with a new view of collective and individual freedoms. In other words, they have created a livable democracy. They have not reinvented the Athenian Agora, they’ve done better with the art of governing man’s dimensions. But can we speak of American democracy without mentioning one of its founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson?

It is an appropriate time to read what Jefferson wrote and rediscover the principles that founded his ideas on which U.S. democracy was built. After all, this democracy, despite some excesses of its leaders, has produced the most dynamic and creative civilization of modern times. At the basis of this democracy are men driven by the desire to create a new order where the United States citizen is the quintessence of political power.

One of the most prestigious of the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson was the father of the Declaration of Independence, and theorist of the highly advanced ideas of the young democracy. He gave irreversible momentum to the idea of freedom in all its forms. He also fought against the attempts of the federal government to monopolize power. He thus warned against the fact that “the greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.” Jefferson had a great concern for holding executive powers to the standards of the law, putting particular emphasis on the freedom of the press and the existence of a representative legislature as “the vital elements of a free government.”

Jefferson was also the first to sense the danger of drifting toward a government with the power of unlimited mandates. As his observations inspired some of companions to deviate, he drew up lessons for recommendations on good governance. He fought fiercely with the possibility of perpetual presidential terms that could, he said, “lead to a monarchy.” This was when the Federalists were beginning to extend some of the flaws that led the Americans to rise up against the authoritarian British, such as inequalities between citizens and abuse of power built into a system of repression. Democracy, according to Thomas Jefferson, was founded on simple principles based on three branches of power: The Executive, the Judiciary and the Legislative.

This was what established the basis for the separation of powers and the key to democracy, with the people remaining the first and last officers. But Jefferson also felt that this would be insufficient without individual liberties and the freedom of the press, on which he was uncompromising. On freedom of the press he wrote, “Freedom of the press –subject only to liability for personal injury –this terrible way to criticize public officials by translating them to the court of public opinion, peacefully generates reforms that would otherwise hope for the revolution. It is also the best instrument to enlighten men and improve their quality as rational, moral, and social creatures.”*

Meditate on those powerful words of a theorist who changed the view that men have power as a function of their relationship to power. One begins to regret, on the eve of the celebration of the anniversary of our independence, that there was not a Thomas Jefferson to formalize guidelines for the young republic, in light of the first derivative appearing at the turn of the crisis of the summer of 1962, which will weigh on Algeria’s future for a long time.

*Editor’s Note: This quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.