Author: Kevin Dickinson / Source: Big Think
- Presidential candidates run on platforms of change and are elected by those who desire their vision of the future.
- We look at seven times presidents’ writings that have been oddly, if accidentally, prophetic.
- Of course, there may be some hindsight bias in our selections.
U.S. Presidents aren’t just chosen to lead us through current events, but because they have a vision of the future their constituents want to be led toward. President Trump’s campaign message in 2016 was to regain America’s economic and political strength, while President Obama’s campaign message in 2008 was racial reconciliation and renegotiation of cultural equity.
Given our desire for forward-thinking leaders, we wanted to look back to see which presidents played the role of an elected Nostradamus and seemed to accurately augur the future. Here are seven prophetic writings penned by seven American presidents.
George Washington
(Photo from Wikimedia)
The George Washington Sculpture at the National Museum of American History, looking super prophetic.
George Washington’s vision for his country was on point, and he laid the foundations for that change throughout his presidency and beyond. In June 1783, Washington wrote his Letter of Farewell to the Army, which contained this prophetic phrase:
For, according to the system of Policy the States shall adopt at this moment, they will stand or fall, and by their confirmation or lapse, it is yet to be decided, whether the Revolution must ultimately be considered as a blessing or a curse: a blessing or a curse, not to the present age alone, for with our fate will the destiny of unborn Millions be involved.
Washington couldn’t have known how right he was. The American Armed Forces were instrumental in defeating the Axis powers in World War II (blessing). Yet it was also an instrument of the violence and territorial seizure that characterized the American Indian Wars (curse). All told, Washington, perhaps more than his contemporaries, believed the impact America would have on the world stage and worked diligently toward fulfilling that prophecy.
Thomas Jefferson
(Photo from Flickr)
A portrait of President Thomas Jefferson
In 1776, the first Virginia General Assembly appointed a committee to revise Virginia law. In total, the committee presented 126 bills, among them the now famous Bill No. 82 “A Bill For establishing religious freedom.”
It’s fellow Bill No. 79, “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” proved less successful but no less prescient. Through it, Thomas Jefferson argued that a liberal education was a public good, and Virginia citizens had a right to it regardless of status.
[…] yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes; […].
Jefferson had his finger a pulse that began pounding in later decades. The U.S.’s first public high school, Boston English, opened in 1820. By 1827, Massachusetts made all grades of public school free of charge, though the state’s first compulsory education law wouldn’t come until 1851.
Historic institutions such as segregation and Indian boarding schools show that America’s rhetoric far outpaces its progress, but as far back as Jefferson, that rhetoric has at least given us a goal to strive for — one our educational system is much closer to today.
Abraham Lincoln
(Photo from Flickr)
The Abraham Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. also had Lincoln looking super prophetic. Must be a sculptor thing.
Thanks to his popularity, many people have spread baseless rumors that Abraham Lincoln had visions of the future. Rumor has it he predicted his own death (he didn’t) and that he received a vision foretelling America’s destruction at the hands of capitalism (also not true).
Like any good rumor, both tales exhibit kernels of truth. Lincoln was interested in dream interpretation, and he did have some not-so-kind words for the brand of capitalism developing in his time.
It is the effect to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. […] Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights.
Many contemporary political grievances today stem from our economy’s undervaluation of labor. Trump’s political base sought redress after their jobs were shipped overseas in the name of capital gains, and Occupy Wall Street protested the extravagances of the financial sector in the wake of the Great Recession.
As Paul Krugman noted in a New York Times op-ed: “The American economy is still, by most measures, deeply depressed. But corporate profits are at a record high. How is that possible? It’s simple: profits have surged as…
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