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.