I just finished watching the final episode of the John Adams miniseries. It was a tearjerker. It was sad when his daughter died of breast cancer. I will admit that I cried when his wife died a few years later. It was emotional. If one watched the whole series, you would understand that Abigail Adams (his wife) was a huge part in John’s life. She have him advice and helped him in almost everything he did.
John himself died on July 4, 1826, the fifty year anniversary of the founding of our great nation. He died only a few hours after Thomas Jefferson, his best friend, died. John and Thomas were the last living of our Founding Fathers, and because of that, John Adams last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives.” He did not know that Jefferson had already died (they were far apart after all).
The end of the final episode had a very interesting line that John Adams said (It was stated in a letter he wrote to his wife, Abigail), and that is, “Now posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I took half the pains to preserve it.”
That line really sums it all up. I guarantee you many who may read what I am writing right now know very little about the Founding Fathers and the Revolution. It’s a crying shame. They show a lot of that in the last episode too. There is a scene (I do not know if it actually happened or not) where John Adams meets the painter and the painting of all of the founders and the continental congress together signing the declaration. He looks at it, calmly, and completely scolds the painter saying that this painting is fiction! It never happened like it was portrayed. He states, “We were at war! Men were in and out of Philadelphia all summer to affix their names to Mr. Jefferson's hallowed document!"
This scene really shows how much our society has forgotten about what these men did. Again, this goes back to the Romanticizing of the Founding and the Revolution.
This whole Miniseries has inspired me to the fullest. I love this country, and I am a history buff (those who know me know this), but I feel that even I do not know enough about our founding. I will start to read and learn more about this critical time. What is sad, is that even though I claim that I do not know enough, most of my friends, and my generation knows less than half of what I know. I worry about that. Maybe, as one of my friends said, they will grow up and get more mature, but right now, the Millennial Generation is the most spoiled of all the generations. I fear that my generation may be worse than the Baby Boomer Generation in terms of selfishness. We have lost sight of why our country was founding.
A big example of my worry is how my generation is so willing to sign away our rights that our ancestors fought so hard for and gave so much. This would include this myth of manmade global warming. People just want to give our rights to lawmakers, because they have convinced people that it’s “our” fault that the planet is warming up. We are to blame, us evil Americans. Our founding fathers would be turning over in their graves to see what we are about to sign on to. They want to force us to use less energy. They want to force us to drive cars that are crap. They want to force us to use the inefficient compact florescent light bulbs. They have banned the traditional incandescent light bulb. All of these mandates and more are taking away from our freedoms. They also want to tax us more for our “sins.”
We have lost our way in terms of what the Founders believed in, but we are not lost. As long as we have our freedoms, we can always go back to the right path; the path of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, limited government, and rest of our rights.
I am rambling now, but this miniseries has inspired me to learn more. To understand what these Founding Father went though. I only got a tiny image of what our Founding Fathers went through with this miniseries; I can only imagine what the real deal was like. I hope the rest of you who read this, watch that miniseries, and strive to learn more about why our country was founded.
