John Adams’ Warning to America | Founding Fathers Series Part 1

What did the Founders really mean by the “pursuit of happiness”?

John Adams believed America could not remain free without virtue, moral character, and a citizenry capable of governing itself.

In this episode, I reveal Adams’ warning about human nature, self-government, and why America’s future depends not merely on liberty—but on the kind of people we become.

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Dinesh D'Souza is an author and filmmaker.  A graduate of Dartmouth College, he was a senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan administration.  He also served as a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  

He is the author of many bestselling books, including "Illiberal Education," "What's So Great About Christianity," "America: Imagine a World Without Her," "The Roots of Obama's Rage," "Death of a Nation," and "United States of Socialism."  

His documentary films "2016: Obama's America," "America," "Hillary's America," "Death of a Nation," and "Trump Card" are among the highest-grossing political documentaries of all time. He and his wife Debbie are also executive producers of the acclaimed feature film "Infidel."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness is a shared
goal of every American. The US Constitution was written to
make it possible. Now, we all have a pretty good
idea about what life and liberty mean. But what about
the last part of the phrase, the pursuit of happiness.
That's a little harder to pin down. Let's give it
a try. The seventeenth century English philosopher John Locke spoke

(00:36):
narrowly of the rights to life, liberty, and property. The
Declaration of Independence widen the scope to something far grander,
the quest for what Aristotle termed the true end of
all human endeavor, happiness itself. We think today of happiness
and relativistic terms, something each person pursues in their own way.

(00:57):
For example, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Polonium advises Laerties quote to
thine own self be true, in other words, be yourself.
We hear this a lot today. To John Adams, America's
second president and a seminal figure in the creation of
the country. This was bad advice for Adams and the founders. Generally,
happiness was a modus vivendi, a way of living expressed

(01:20):
by how one conducted oneself, especially in public. Adams understood
that people are an imperfect amalgam of the admirable and
the abominable. That being yourself does not automatically lead to
good character. It's more likely, in fact, to lead to
self absorption. The only way to attain a good character is,

(01:40):
like everything else, to work at it. Now. The best
way to do this, Adams contended, was literally to imagine
a noble character. Here we're talking about a character, like
a character in a play, and then strive to become
that character. Walk like that character, think like him, feel
like him, act like him. Over time, through the result
of continue effort and the slow working of habit, one

(02:03):
can become that person. Adams practiced what he preached in
this way. He became a public figure both incorruptible and
unfailingly honest. He became the best version of himself. This
takes us back to the founder's conception of happiness. They
subscribed to the Aristotelian belief the genuine happiness is achieved

(02:24):
when the quote activity of the soul is in perfect
harmony with virtue. None of the founders reflected on this
idea more than John Adams. Not only did he want
his own life to be defined by virtue. He also
wanted the infant republic to be built on it. Without virtue,
he believed America could not succeed now. Today, the term

(02:45):
virtue seems anachronistic, a notion from the past, but to
Adam's America's survival as a free country depended on it. Quote.
The preservation of liberty, he wrote, depends on the intellectual
and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge
and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation,
it is impossible they should be enslaved In a monarchy.

(03:08):
Adams noted that people don't need virtue. They can be
quote as vicious and foolish as they please, because all
political responsibility lies in the hands of the king and
his retinue. In a republic, however, the people are the government.
So the virtue of the state is a reflection of
the virtue of the people. Given that human nature is
deeply flawed, this created and obvious problem of which Adams

(03:32):
was painfully aware. Quote I've seen all along my life.
He observed such selfishness and littleness that I sometimes tremble
to think that although we are engaged in the best cause,
that ever employed the human heart. The prospect of success
is doubtful, not for want of power or wisdom, but

(03:53):
of virtue. How could the new nation develop a virtuous
citizenry a devout Christian with an ormal respect for the
Jews and the Hebrew Bible. Adams certainly saw belief in
God and fear of his judgment as indispensable, so was
a proper education, but he did not think these were enough.

(04:13):
A virtuous government would also be necessary. Here's whay. A
clearly delineated and easily understood constitution would be essential, and
no one worked harder than Adams to create one. His
focus was to give citizens the ability to thwart the conniving, corrupt,
power lusting politicians for which he had so much contempt.

(04:34):
Once identified, they could simply be voted out of office
and better people could take their place. Additionally, good government
would attract good people, capable leaders on whose ambition could
be enlisted. Quote on the side of virtue. Arguably, we're
a long way from having the kind of leaders elected
by the kind of people that Adams wanted the American

(04:55):
constitutional system to help create, and well more likely to
think of percion suing happiness in narcissistic terms than in
the way that Adams and the Founders perceived it. Perhaps
it is only by reflecting on our political problems as
a reflection of flawed human nature, and on adams proposed remedies,
beginning with the development of good character in each citizen,

(05:19):
that America has a chance of finding its way back
to the path on which the Founders so wisely and
deliberately placed us