Liberty and Government: An American Tipping Point

Thomas Paine said that “It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.” He did so amidst the long shadow of a centralized government which regarded individual rights as secondary to its own. Today, “56% of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey . . . say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.” They do so in the shadow of a government seeking to take control of nearly 17% of the US economy, if not that portion of our lives, in the name of caring for our health.

For any that have cared to listen to the debates over multi-trillion dollar spending programs, tax hikes, cap and trade or health care, at issue is not simply whether those huge government programs would provide lasting solutions – they will not – at issue is our basic right to Liberty. Quite frankly, it was never the assumption of the Founding Fathers that it was the role of government to provide a moving target standard of living for Americans. It was their sincere hope that the government of limited powers they set up would allow people to pursue their lives, Liberty and happiness. To do so they, wanted to hamstring government’s ability to act – not ours.

Since then, of course, the scale has tipped in favor of government power over our pursuits. Each step along the way, those concerned with our Liberty have heard the echoes of Senator Daniel Webster when he said:

“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”

As you consider his words, it may worthy to also consider the lives of Americans, at the dawn of these United States, and the lives of Americans today.

We can start by noting that the freedom of the early American settlers’ was curtailed perhaps only in relation to their ability to remain safe. The bravest among them ventured westward and put stakes in the ground to claim their unbridled Manifest Destiny and ours. Today, by contrast, property owners’ use of land, already their own, is vastly curtailed by government restrictions, setbacks, and zoning limitations – not to mention often unwarranted and often uncompensated takings.

We should also note that, at the birth of our Nation, a loose confederation of unruly states, fresh from their Revolutionary War victory had to be coaxed into ratifying the Articles of Confederation – Articles that proved so unfastened that a more “perfect union” was advocated less than a decade later. Today, the Federal Government promulgates hundreds of thousands of pages of superseding laws and regulations that ties the hands of those States whose powers were once thought to be “numerous and indefinite.”

Beyond those considerations, even the Founding Fathers of our Country did not see fit to impose an income tax on Americans. Indeed, no less than Chief Justice John Marshall said that “in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.” Today, that is not even a distant memory for Congressional leaders who regularly advocate income tax increases and who, along with state governments, have taxed America with a myriad of taxes and fees simply unimaginable in Marshall’s time.

If you are as yet unpersuaded by those examples, consider that Presidents Jefferson and Madison did not believe that our Constitution permitted the government to levy taxes to pay for roads yet, today, our government does just that to not only pay for the roads but subsidize the purchase of the cars driven on those roads.

So what happened between now and then? Did our rights become worth less overnight? Did those numerous and indefinite powers our Founders thought they were reserving to the States become lost without our knowing it? Or did we simply fail to safeguard ourselves despite Jefferson’s warning that the “natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield.”

It is, of course, the sum of those things and more – all of which brings us to today. With so many people against the direction of our government, let alone this latest government takeover, only the arrogance of a central planner could deem their actions as listening to the American people let alone responsive to them. In truth, as so many Americans now do, we must understand that their good intentions are only pleaded in pursuit of their assumption of authority. It is up to the Thomas Paine in the rest of us to guard our country against the dangers of their good intentions lest the American experiment with Liberty reach beyond this tipping point.