(1) History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781
(2) The house of representatives...can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interest, and sympathy of sentiments, of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. - James Madison, Federalist #57, 1788
On the first point, another sign of a civil society is that society's knowing of history and its' effects, both for the good and for the bad. A country ignorant of its' history is a country doomed to repeat the past, warts and all.
On the second point? James Madison would be fuming (as would most political leaders of the period he lived in) over how Congress and America's elites in general have insulated themselves from the laws they enforce on the rest of us. Another sign of the two-tiered I hope Trump eliminates once and for all.
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