WHERE ART THOU, JETHRO?

By Joe Wilkins

Copyright © 2015

At the time of the founding of the United States of America, no governments on the face of the Earth were designed to provide their people with freedom, economic prosperity, and peace. All governments that existed at that time were structured to exploit their citizens, keep them in poverty, be of benefit to privileged rulers, and keep their youth ready for wars against other nations.

Thus, our Founding Fathers faced a monumental task: how to create and organize a fledgling nation into one that gave its people a voice in their own governance. After much research by Thomas Jefferson and several other Founding Fathers, the rough structure of our new government evolved in their minds. The US Constitution was the result of their efforts. However, it is doubtful if many academic courses in US history have given notice and credit to the earlier, historical events that created the roadmap followed by the Founders, as they struggled to create a constitution to adequately serve this new nation.

To fully understand the process the Founders studied, modified, and adopted, we must go back in history to the ancient Israelites and examine the government they developed, and then look at what the Anglo Saxons did to improve it.

Aside from its religious connotations, the Bible is among the most important historical references of early, civilized humankind. The Bible describes much of mankind’s early history, and we will use this record to document our reasoning, hopefully satisfying Christians, Jews, and non-believers alike.

We begin with the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, which in elaborate detail outline the events of Moses and his people as they escaped slavery under the Egyptians. A popular image in most people’s minds, unintentionally promoted by movies and sketchy Sunday school classes, has given many Christians and Jews the idea that Moses was in command of a small band of followers. However, Exodus gives their numbers as 603,550 men who were fit for military duty, with the total number perhaps exceeding three million, counting women, children, and elderly men.

Now, that is too many people for one person to manage. Moses initially tried to govern these people alone, following the methods he had learned while serving under Pharaoh. Imagine three million people, in the middle of the Sinai wilderness, having just gained their freedom, trying to reorganize their lives in order to survive. As one might imagine, they had many kinds of problems, so they went to Moses to resolve their difficulties. According to Exodus, Moses’ method was to sit from morning to evening, listening to the complaints, trying to resolve—by himself—all the disputes that these people brought before him! An impossible task, obviously.

Thankfully, Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, soon arrived into the camp from Midian, and he noticed the folly of Moses’ method of governance. He said to Moses, “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone.”

Moses listened to Jethro’s advice, and followed his instructions to set up a different method of governance. (The Bible does not tell where Jethro learned this method.) Moses then appointed capable, godly, honest men as judges, setting up a manageable leader’s hierarchy of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. Moses made the top selections of new leaders himself, and they in turn then picked additional leaders on down the hierarchy. Granted they were not elected at the beginning stage, and Exodus does not give us all the details, but it is clear that a people-oriented, selection process evolved.  Thus, the burden of governing this large group of Israelites was distributed to the people themselves, leaving Moses and the higher-ups to judge only those cases that could not be resolved by those at the more local levels. This was the first instance in recorded history that a republic form of government was created. As an aside, this writer wonders why he has never heard a sermon about this whole process. It is a critical event in Biblical history, inspiring our Founder Fathers to create a constitution giving religious freedom to all US citizens.

The Old Testament books, outlining the life of Moses, illustrate how this advice from Jethro evolved into what we now recognize as the republic form of governing people. And the Founding Fathers—especially Jefferson—being scholarly, religiously versed men, very knowledgeable about the Bible, were deeply influenced by Moses’ experience, as they searched for ways to structure the new American government, in reaction to the abuses they were suffering at the hands of the British. Also, being descendents of Anglo Saxon Europeans, the Founders were aware that these ancestors, who originated in the Black Sea area of the Middle East, came from the same area where the Ten Tribes of Israel were thought to have disappeared. It appears reasonable that the Anglo Saxons may have mixed and intermarried with these tribes, and adopted Moses’ republic form of government as a result.   At the very least, the Anglo Saxons were probably culturally influenced by these “lost” Israelites, adopting their form of government, and, over time, spread these new ideas and methods throughout Europe as they migrated westward. As opposed to being ruled by kings, despots and warlords, they originated a more “people oriented” form of governance.

The Anglo Saxons spread all over Europe, influencing indigenous people, conquering and intermarrying royalties, reforming tribal customs, and establishing their new form of government. They fundamentally transformed Europe, and eventually colonized Iceland, Greenland, and Canada. There are even accounts they came into America and intermarried with Indians in Wisconsin, eventually migrating to the Dakotas, substantiated by reports of blue-eyed Indians in the Midwest. However, all of these New World adventures ultimately failed and disappeared into obscure history.

It is clear that a republic form of government was becoming increasingly necessary. Early in humankind history the most common form of government were tribes, which being small, could manage their affairs in rather informal ways. But as the tribes increased in  size, more order was needed, so various forms of leadership developed, including chieftains, sultans, despots, or other top-of-the pyramid-type leaders, who usually cared less for their subjects than their own ambitions. As long as the tribes remained relatively small, existing as hunter-gatherers, foraging off the natural resources of the land, this method worked.  However, with increasing numbers of people, the development of agriculture evolved to feed them. In fact, the Jewish people in Egypt existed under an agricultural system, but were slaves of the Pharaohs, who needed to keep the Jews in slavery to make their system work. Ultimately, this system broke down, and Moses led the enslaved Jews out of Egypt. Once free, these Jews needed a new form of government.

From Moses time to the American Revolution, the Anglo Saxons slowly evolved a system that gave more power to the people. Admittedly it was not a perfect system, consisting of kings, dukes, knights, earls, freeman, indentured servants and others, but it was a process that was heading toward giving individuals more power and freedom to pursue their own best interests in life. It is amazing that the Founding Fathers were aware of all this. It is a tribute to their intelligence, scholarship, dedication, and desire for more individual freedom for themselves and their fellow citizens, that they were able to take this evolving form of government to its highest level in the form of the US Constitution. In, fact Jefferson made copies of their laws and distributed them to his friends and to the other Founders. He was convinced that the system of government developed under Moses, adopted and modified by the Anglo Saxons over the centuries, was the wisest and most perfect ever devised by mankind. It was the stimulus of his and the Founders efforts in developing our Constitution. And it took considerable courage for them to do this, because had they failed they would have been executed by the English.

At this time it now appears that our republic form of government is increasingly being disregarded. Rather than affirming and strengthening it, many are now trying to revert back to the old ways by applauding failed systems of government: fascism, communism, socialism, despotism–in short, forms of government that seek to take away the core value of republic governments, which is individual liberty in as many areas of life that can be responsibly allowed.

One issue that needs to be addressed is the tendency of many Americas to call our current government a “democracy.”  It is not a democracy in the pure government sense. Students of government know there is a subtle difference between a democracy and a republic. A democracy is a form of government in which the ultimate power resides in the people, which is exercised directly by them or by their elected representatives under a free electoral system. In a republic the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote, and that power is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by them. Rephrasing, democracy is  government  directly by the people, and a republic is a government governed by elected representatives.

As we can see, in a democracy, the majority rules, and mob rule is possible, with rights of the individual being ignored if the majority so decrees it. In ancient Greece, Socrates was condemned to execution by a majority of his peers simply because they did not like his teachings. The Salem witch trials were also democracy in action when a majority of the people condemned a group of young girls for supposedly practicing witchcraft. Under a democracy the rights of the individuals can be superseded if the majority decides to do so. However, if the eligible voters surrender their right of absolute majority rule to that of a freely elected group of representatives, under restrictions such as our Constitution, that is a republic. In America, the States and the Constitution have decided who is eligible to vote. Those voters then select local and national representatives to govern, while following the restrictions imposed by the Constitution.

Reviewing all this history, there is a critical element that seems to have been forgotten in America—and particularly in the rest of the world. Our republic form of government is eroding, as it has in Europe, heading toward a socialistic, fascist style of government, with more and more power transferred to the Federal government, ostensibly for control purposes, but at the price of individual freedoms. This shift of power has been necessary in some cases, due to neglect and abuses at the State and lower levels, but is resulting in federal bureaucracies that behave like despotic kings of old. It is an axiom of human beings that if they relinquish individual liberties to those above them, they never get them back without revolutionary-type actions.

The Founders understood that a republic demands virtuous, upright citizens to be capable of maintaining their hard-earned freedoms. The more freedom we desire, the more virtuous we must be. Ben Franklin noted that as nations become more corrupt and viscous, they have more need of masters. The strengthening of the Federal and State governments in recent decades means we are losing our morality.

From all this we have to conclude that our government in America—arguably the best ever devised—comes from the morality, culture, and Judeo-Christian ancestors. If you doubt this, name a country that has been better than America. Therefore, to stay at our highest level, and to improve even more, we have to be a people who are virtuous, law abiding, fiscally sound, respectful of individual rights, place property rights at high levels, maintain a solid currency, control government debts, place victim rights over that of criminals, keep families intact and make them more responsible for their children, treat all citizens equally, provide for and require adequate education of all citizens, require all government and private entities to operate according to principles of law, and promote high standards of morality among all citizens. History has demonstrated that deviance from these principles ultimately leads to the downfall of the offending society. I fear that American is now on a downward path.

We need another Jethro.