This was in our little local newspaper that serves our suburb and I thought it was awesome.  The only thing wrong with it is that I didn't write it! 

What's Happened to the Gene Pool
By Chuck Green
Northglenn / Thornton Sentinel
March 30, 2006

For some reason that eludes me, I have been reading a lot recently about America's so-called Founding Fathers. My attention has been drawn, like a teenager to video games, to our nation's colonial era.

Okay, that's a poor analogy, but nevertheless my preoccupation with the formative days of our country has demanded an unreasonable amount of my time, and I have absolutely no explanation for this out-of-character phenomenon.

However, it has gotten me to thinking about something that probably is worth discussing.

The people I've been reading about – those distant but somewhat familiar figures named Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Adams, Franklin – clearly were in abundance in those days.

They emerged from a relatively small society – about 2 million people in 1770. In that year, the entire population of what then was New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts was about double what Colorado Springs' size is today.

Yet, I found myself pondering recently, how many Jeffersons, Madisons and Franklins might be residing in El Paso County this week? (Stifle that laughter, mister!).

Here was a nearly primitive society – no plumbing, no electricity, no motor vehicles, no reliable communications system – able to win a revolutionary war, establish vigorous commerce and create a remarkable system of government that stands today as the longest-surviving democracy in world history.

Consider this: Their representatives met in September 1786 to discuss forming a constitutional government, and one year later the final draft of a Constitution was adopted and submitted to the states for ratification. Over the next four years, the states ratified the Constitution, George Washington was elected president, Congress was formed and convened, John Jay was appointed the first chief justice of the United States, and the Bill of Rights was ratified.

All of this in little more than five years, when travel and communications were by horseback.

And these people didn't even like each other.

As documented in a most informative but entertaining book by Eric Burns, "Infamous Scribblers: The founding fathers and the rowdy beginnings of American journalism," the era was marked by some of the nation's most vehement rivalries. Yet their great minds produced this amazing republic of ours, with its unprecedented concepts of personal freedoms.

In today's political climate, and with a pool of 300 million intellects, we haven't been able to craft a reform of our Social Security system in more time than it took to create the nation.

In the same five-year span that our Constitution was created, the government formed and a court system, a treasury, an army, a diplomatic corps and a commerce department were formed, today's Congress has been unable to:

Solve our immigration problems.

Reform the health-care crisis.

Disentangle a disgustingly complicated income-tax system.

Agree on a national energy policy.

I'm not suggesting that Congress should have solved all of these problems in the same time that was required to create America, but just one of them.

Where have our talents, and our dynamic political leadership, gone? What has happened to that extraordinary gene pool of the 1770s and 1780s?

I've concluded that it is still with us, but redirected. The brainpower of Franklin and Jefferson and Washington still exists, but it resides in personalities with names like Trump, Gates, Perot and Buffett. Their interests lie not in forms of government and the discourse of politics, but in making money.

That is not unreasonable, as it reflects the priorities of the people themselves. We would not tolerate in public office today these men who are determined and ambitious and independent, those traits that defined the colonial leaders. Their opinions would not be welcomed, vigorous debate would not be tolerated, their personal rowdiness not permitted.

While their talents are discouraged in politics, they find their rewards in business. We have driven them out of public service.

Jefferson, Madison and Franklin could not survive in today's climate of political correctness. We must satisfy ourselves by reading about them in the history books.

Chuck Green, veteran Colorado journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Denver Post, syndicates a statewide column and is at chuckgreencolo@msn.com .