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« on: December 16, 2011, 02:58:23 PM » |
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The Patriot Post - Liberty v the Fatal Cycle of Democracy
From The Federalist Patriot
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Liberty v the Fatal Cycle of Democracy
By Mark Alexander · Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Path from Freedom to Bondage
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." --Thomas Jefferson
December 15th marks the anniversary of the 1791 ratification of the Bill of Rights1, the common name for the first 10 amendments to our Constitution. The purpose of the Bill was, and remains, to assert the enumeration of limitations on the national government in order to protect our natural rights to Liberty and property as "endowed by our Creator2."
There was much debate among our Founders about the need to enumerate rights that are inherently endowed, especially as amendments rather than in the corpus of our Constitution. Alexander Hamilton argued this point in Federalist No. 84: "I ... affirm that bills of rights ... are not only unnecessary in the proposed Constitution, but would even be dangerous. ... For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?"
But a majority of our Founders, led by James Madison and George Mason, prevailed, and the state legislatures concurred with the addition of enumerated limitations on the central government, as outlined by the Bill of Rights Preamble3: "The Conventions of a number of the States having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added..."
Thus, it is a fitting day to pause and take account of the principles of Essential Liberty4 embodied in our Constitution, the sustenance for which generations of Patriots have expended much treasure, blood and life.
As a vigilant student of American history, I can't state too emphatically that we are at a tipping point between Liberty and tyranny. I also argue that this juncture is like no other since the Tenth Amendment5 challenge that was waged and lost in the War Between the States6.
For those who choose to read such words as hyperbole, Samuel Adams said it best: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
But it is the inherent nature of genuine Patriots7 to stand ever ready to defend Liberty, convicted that, in the words of George Washington, "Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind."
It is in that spirit that I offer this observation about this precarious position we now inhabit between freedom and bondage.
Do you believe our nation is at a critical juncture? Post your opinion.8
To fully understand the state of our Republic, one must consider it in the context of history to avoid repetition. As 20th-century philosopher George Santayana concluded in his treatise, "The Life of Reason": "Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
In 1764, as historian Edward Gibbon "sat musing amidst the ruins" of Rome, he was inspired to write about the failure of republics. The original text of his seminal work, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," was published in 1776, as our Patriot ancestors were declaring our natural right to Liberty. Gibbon outlined in detail how opulence and entitlement led to the incremental loss of civic virtue.
The 18th/19th century Scotsman Alexander Fraser Tytler, a lawyer and professor of history, summarized this link as follows: "[Patriotism], like all other affections and passions, it operates with the greatest force where it meets with the greatest difficulties ... but in a state of ease and safety, as if wanting its appropriate nourishment, it languishes and decays. ... It is a law of nature to which no experience has ever furnished an exception, that the rising grandeur and opulence of a nation must be balanced by the decline of its heroic virtues." |
