Ignorance and Vice: The One-Two Punch for Tyranny
“It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice.”
Samuel Adams warned us – tyranny is built on people who lack knowledge and strong morals. That’s because he knew freedom is built on the opposite foundation.
“For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge prevail.”
He was far from alone.
Writing in December 1778, before the war for independence had even reached its bloodiest peak, Benjamin Rush recognized the greatest danger to liberty had already shifted away from the British government.
“The time is now past when the least danger is to be apprehended to our liberties from the power of Britain, the arts of commissioners, or the machinations of tories.”
He wasn’t talking about military battles. He was warning about the enemies within.
“Tyranny can now enter our country only in the shape of a whig. All our jealousy should be of ourselves. All our fears should be of our great men, whether in civil or military authority.”
He knew – freedom has a strict prerequisite.
“Virtue, virtue alone, my dear friend, is the basis of a republic.”
To Rush and the revolutionaries, a truly virtuous people would never tolerate or submit to arbitrary power, because they viewed compliance with tyranny as a moral failure that guarantees political slavery.
These views represent what might be the ultimate one-two punch for tyranny – one that has led to a complete betrayal of the principles of the American Revolution.
IGNORANCE
As Benjamin Rush warned, it starts with real education. A people cannot claim and defend rights they don’t even know or recognize.
“Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.”
He quoted Cesare Beccaria to expose what tyrants fear most: a people who know too much.
“When the clouds of ignorance are dispelled by the radiance of knowledge, authority trembles.”
Thomas Paine saw this as a pattern across history. Tyrants have always weaponized ignorance for one simple reason: educated people argue and resist, while ignorant people obey.
“Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”
Paine was channeling Montesquieu, who knew the ignorant will “trust the experts” who gladly tell them what to do – even though they’re often pretty ignorant too.
“Excessive obedience supposes ignorance in the person that obeys: the same it supposes in him that commands; for he has no occasion to deliberate, to doubt, to reason; he has only to will.”
People with power have always known this well. So, as John Locke wrote, when faced with a population more interested in learning – “inquisitive,” as he put it – they weaponize language and twist the meaning of words to keep the truth hidden in plain sight.
“Thus learned ignorance, and this art of keeping, even inquisitive men, from true knowledge, hath been propagated in the world, and hath much perplexed whilst it pretended to inform the understanding.”
And when all else fails? John Dickinson reminded us of the obvious: they’ll just lie.
“All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible.”
Put it all together – and it’s pretty easy to see why Thomas Jefferson came to the conclusion that ignorance and freedom can never coexist.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free … it expects what never was and never will be.”
That’s the bad news. But Thomas Paine had some good news, the fatal weakness in their plan: they can never force anyone back to ignorance once they’ve broken through.
“Ignorance is of a peculiar nature: once dispelled, it is impossible to re-establish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant.”
We’re all victims of a government-run and government-approved “education” system, so there’s no shame in starting from scratch. The real disgrace, as Benjamin Franklin put it, is choosing to stay there.
“Being ignorant is not so much a Shame, as being unwilling to learn.”
VICE
But that’s not the end of the story.
Ignorance alone is dangerous. As St. George Tucker warned, when combined with cowardice, it’s fatal.
“When ignorance is united with supineness, liberty becomes lethargic, and despotism erects her standard without opposition.”
Thomas Jefferson explained how it starts. The collapse of liberty doesn’t begin with gunfire or invasions – it begins with an internal rot. A quiet, invisible corrosion that spreads through the people until the entire system breaks.
“It is the manners and spirit of the people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”
Benjamin Franklin also knew that freedom cannot survive the corruption of the people.
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
James Madison issued a strong warning on this as well. If the people themselves are corrupt, they won’t just tolerate tyrants in office, they’ll literally vote for them – over and over and over. And that makes every branch of government just as rotten as the people who put them there.
“To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.”
Understanding this history, John Dickinson saw how liberty really dies. It isn’t taken at gunpoint. It’s surrendered – willingly.
“They voluntarily fasten their chains, by adopting a pusillanimous opinion, ‘that there will be too much danger in attempting a remedy’ – or another opinion no less fatal – ‘that the government has a right to treat them as it does.’”
In short, they either lack the virtue – and the courage that goes with it – to defend their liberty, or they’re too ignorant to know that government has no right to treat them as it does.
That’s why Samuel Adams didn’t pull any punches. If the people refuse to protect and defend their own constitution and their own liberty, they don’t deserve sympathy, they’ve earned contempt.
“If therefore a people will not be free; if they have not virtue enough to maintain their liberty against a presumptuous invader, they deserve no pity, and are to be treated with contempt and ignominy.”
THE WARNING
This standard grew out of Adams’ one-two punch for freedom: Knowledge – a deep understanding of the source of their rights, along with an unbreakable moral duty to do so against all hazards, despite the odds stacked against them.
You can see the former reflected in one of the most famous passages near the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
While the latter is reflected in the final sentence, a solemn pledge.
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
That brings us to Benjamin Franklin’s chilling prediction. On September 17, 1787 – the final day of the Philadelphia Convention – he gave his approval to the newly drafted Constitution, but not without one final warning.
It likely raised some eyebrows then. It’s prophetic today.
“This is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
We were warned.
Not in secret. Not in vague terms. Openly. Repeatedly. By the founders themselves, the people who knew firsthand how liberty is won – and how it’s lost.
“We the People” did not listen, but don’t just blame the tyrants.
Blame the people who’ve given them power, who’ve tolerated them, who’ve encouraged them – the ones who made them possible through their ignorance and moral corruption.
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