The question of weather or not Democracy will actually be achieved is very hotly debated especially in the political realm. I suppose we really should not be surprised at that as each side uses this debate to further their positions of power. The liberal mind wishes very much to see the Bush administration experience defeat so as to flaunt failed policy. The conservative mind would greatly like see victory here so as to reference success in some way when defending the pro-war argument. Not to say that they like war but to have something positive result from all of the fighting and sacrifice made.
So knowing that we can’t trust the opinion of our political leaders we need to find answers from sources that are removed from the current situation and that have experienced democracy and the establishment of it first hand. Who better to ask then our “Founding Fathers”? As founders of our great democracy they can reveal to us the “how to” in establishing such a notion into reality. In other words, how it [democracy] can and will endure. Secondly, as “fathers” they would speak with love and affection in relation to the freedom of the offspring or future benefactors of democracy so as to be assured that we were part of their concern in developing this great nation as a republic. So in light of this let’s take a look at how the patriarchs of our country viewed the establishment and preservation of democracy.
The first view point concerning democracy was that is was the act of Providence from a Sovereign God. George Washington in a letter to Jonathan Trumbull (the British Governor of Connecticut loyal to the American Independence) wrote:

“We may, with kind of grateful and pious exultation, trace the finger of Providence through those dark and mysterious events, which first induced the States to appoint a general Convention and then led them one after another into adoption of the system recommended by that general Convention; thereby in all human probability, laying a lasting foundation for tranquility and happiness.”

Again in his Inaugural address to both Houses of Congress on April 30, 1789 he said,

“…It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations and whose providential aids can supply every human defect … Every step by which they [Americans] have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”

Benjamin Franklin (who was at times deistic in his thinking) wrote:

“It is the duty of mankind on all suitable occasions to acknowledge their dependence on the Divine Being … [that] Almighty God would mercifully interpose and still the rage of war among the nations … [and that] He would take this province under His protection, confound the designs and defeat the attempts of its enemies, and unite our hearts and strengthen our hands in every undertaking that may be for the public, good, and for our defense and security in this time of danger.”

Thomas Jefferson who was appointed to draft a seal for the newly United States to express the spirit of the nation proposed:

“The children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.”

He also said in his Second Inaugural Address:

“… I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life, who has covered our infancy with His Providence and our riper years with His wisdom…”

John Adams wrote in 1772 in the notes of his speech:

“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth”

I have only sited a few but the list would go on and on if space allowed. I hope you understand the point. The founding of democracy was in the eyes of these early patriots a gift from God, even the very work of God. Democracy isn’t just a system to plug in, it is an ideal. It is a purpose founded in the Grace of Almighty God. He is the beginning of it as well as the focus of it. From these testimonies it seems that the attempt at establishing democracy in Iraq has already promised failure by the mere fact that Allah is expected to attempt what only God can do and has done.
In the next part we will look at the early American Fathers’ view of the necessity of Christianity in the establishment and sustained function of democracy.