If Men Were Angels

Please open your Federalist Papers to #51, paragraph 4.

I take for my text today the words of James Madison: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

Madison here is referring to man’s moral limitations, which he understands must be offset in some manner through the creation of a uniquely designed system of government.

“In framing a government,” he notes, “which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Madison goes on to say that “dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

So was James Madison simply delusional and paranoid? Did he and his colleagues who supported and promoted the Constitution totally misunderstand and misread human nature? Were they overreacting? Or were their observations insightful and correct?

Judging from our current predicament: a federal government wholly out of control, with ambitious men and women scrambling like fiends to expand their power, one would have to conclude that James Madison was neither delusional nor paranoid. And he and his colleagues certainly were not overreacting.

Madison published this thoughtful treatise on checks and balances in 1788. We are now in the year 2009, and the nation is in dire straits. Neither the people nor the auxiliary precautions spoken of by Madison have succeeded in restraining the federal government. It continues to grow with alarming rapidity and races downward uninhibited.

We now stand at the very place our Founding Fathers hoped we would never see. Many who hold the highest political offices in the land are feverishly dismantling what our ancestors meticulously built and passed on to us. These men and women are clever and polished hypocrites. They draw near to us with their lips but their hearts are far from us. They are blind leaders of the blind, and they are leading us all into a ditch.

If you are an American, a true American, it is time to open your eyes to what is going on around you; indeed, it is well past that time. We can no longer afford to be distracted and divided. We must cease being democrats and republicans and become patriots, patriots who will stand firmly together against the advancing tyranny that threatens us on every side.

The Bible tells us that a “hypocrite with his mouth destroyeth his neighbour: but through knowledge shall the just be delivered.”

If we want to be delivered from the grasp of these diabolical schemers, we had better start acquiring some political knowledge fast and share it with our neighbors.

James Madison’s days have past. But the world always has need of men and women who cherish freedom. It is now our turn, and good fortune, to resist tyrants and proclaim liberty.

My New Career

On March 24th of last year I started this blog. At the time, I had no plans for making it political; indeed, I had no plans at all. I only wanted an excuse to write.

But then we were hit by the mortgage crisis and the presidential campaign, and during those dark and stormy days, I began putting my political two cents in. Soon I upped the ante to a nickel and then a quarter. And before I knew it, I was investing heavily and had become a genuine political commentator.

Okay, maybe not.

In any case, I’m now asking myself: If I were to continue with my newly discovered career, how much impact would I have? Of course there’s no way of telling. But we’re definitely at a critical intersection in this country and only a few people are giving any thought to keeping liberty alive while we’re reviving the economy. Our president and his cohorts in Congress are all in a lather over “change” and “stimulus packages.” In their headlong and madcap rush to get the tentacles of government firmly wrapped around every part of our nation’s economy, liberty has been thoughtlessly shoved aside.

So with that said, I think I might just go on preaching the merits of liberty for a while. Someone has to do it, after all. And there seems to be darn little interest in the job. The field’s wide open.

Remember, dear friends, it is not the Constitution or our system of government that has failed us. It is the current crop of immoral and unscrupulous political leaders who have let us down. They are rapidly transforming our democratic government into a despotic government. They are deliberately and methodically turning upside down the truly remarkable and ingenious system of government our forebears created for us.

Today, more than ever before, good, hardworking Americans, individuals with worthy dreams and goals of their own, are being called upon to sweat and sacrifice in order to support an intrusive, mismanaged and bloated federal government. Our current political leaders seem to have forgotten that our government was created by the people to serve the people.
We--we the people--are the masters of government, not the other way around.

Bear in mind that when the government becomes heavily invested and involved in our nation’s major banks, insurance companies and auto giants, it is acquiring and consolidating POWER, power that was not granted to the federal government by the Constitution. And POWER, especially unlimited power in a few hands, is a dangerous and ugly thing. Make no mistake about it.

Surely we can all agree that sacrificing liberty to save the economy is a poor bargain. We need to start getting more people into government who understand that it isn’t necessary to dismantle and destroy what is best about our country in order to generate so-called prosperity and security.

Every so often a generation of Americans has the privilege of fighting for what is right. Let’s not back away from this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Let’s boldly embrace it.

Please lend your full support to those in Congress who are on the side of liberty. And at the same time begin dumping those who are bent upon making themselves autocrats and kings--like Harry Reid, for example.

We once had a government that allowed its citizens to possess and enjoy the fruits of their labor. We now have one that is determined to tax and regulate its citizens into bondage.

We were taught as children that as human beings we have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must never let our government get the idea that those rights are for sale.