One way a people are judged is by how they honor their great men. We Americans have been blessed with many -Washington, Lincoln, FDR- the shapers of our nation. Washington and Lincoln were commemorated with splendid, individual holidays. No longer. They've now been lumped together in a President's Day whose main purpose seems to be advertising and selling cars and coats.

Other founders of our democracy are largely ignored in present-day America. Such has been the fate in many respects of our sixth president, John Quincy Adams (1825-29) -diplomat, president, congressman. Inheritor of the moral and intellectual strengths of some of the finest among New England's first settlers, he fought tirelessly for what he knew was right for his and our nation. An ardent abolitionist, he fought against slavery. A humanitarian, he opposed president Andrew Jackson's contemptuous genocide of the Cherokees in 1838. Trained as a lawyer, he argued for the black mutineers of the slave ship Amistad before the Supreme Court and won their freedom.

Like Abraham Lincoln, he opposed our nation's first step on the road to imperialism, the Mexican War (1846-48), designed to steal land from Mexico, annex Texas, and extend slavery, the South's 'peculiar institution'. In the coming months, when our summer holidays approach -Memorial Day and the Fourth- we would do well to remember his unswerving adherence to the moral path. During these holidays, all too often we slight our country's founding ideals and do not acknowledge their eloquent spokespeople.

John Quincy Adams, a Hose representative after his presidency, suffered a stroke in Congress (dying two days later) when he rose to oppose a motion to commend the veterans of the mercenary Mexican War. Like all wars, it had involved the slaughter of innocents. A genuine patriot -foe of slavery, imperialism, and war- he could not support the approbation of these veterans, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Today we send malleable young women and men all over the globe to secure our oil supplies, telling them they're 'protecting our nation, fighting for freedom, or bringing democracy'. John Quincy Adams, along with so many others, is a prophet without honor in his own land. We seem to have booted the better angels of our glorious heritage right out the back door.