Our drift toward socialsim

 

Consider the following two quotes:

“What is government but itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?  If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government 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. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government”.

“Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism”, any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course…….”

The first quote is by James Madison, “Father of the Constitution” and our fourth President which is from Federalist Paper # 51.  The second is by Barack Obama, our forty-fourth and current President and is quoted in his book, “The Audacity of Hope”.  One has to ask, why the obvious difference in worldview?  Why would Madison feel the need to explain the case for limited government and Obama feel the need to explain why politicians can’t let the Constitution inhibit them?

I believe the difference is to a large degree the result of a state run educational system.  I’m not talking about the dumbing down of the American electorate to the point that they cannot follow anything more complex than a ten second sound bite. That is a discussion for another day.  What I am talking about is the systematic divorcing of a Biblical worldview from education over the last sixty years. [

The educator Samuel Johnson once said that the primary purpose of education is to teach students right from wrong and to get them to prefer the right.  And that is the primary difference between the educational system that was in place in this country up until the 1940’s and the educational system that we have had since then.  Those responsible for forming the nation were the products of a liberal arts education informed by a Biblical worldview.  Our present day legislators were educated with a secular worldview. They therefore reject the concept of absolute truth, the idea that man is subject to God’s laws, they do not have a proper understanding of the nature of man or understand the proper role of government.  The fruits of these different worldviews can be seen in the legislation passed by both groups.

The Homestead Act, passed in 1862, was probably one of the greatest acts of impartial legislation ever passed in this country.  It took the land in the West--one of the greatest assets held by any government in history— and gave it in 160 parcels to anyone willing to settle it.  As a result we witnessed the greatest spurt in economic development in our history.

The Homestead Act gave land to any citizen, regardless of race or economic status and with the certainty that those settling on this land would not be constrained to vote for a certain politician.  The land was available to all Americans, with no strings attached, in perfect keeping with the spirit of ‘promoting the general welfare’. It wasn’t just available some particular minority group or constituency.

What is important is the worldview behind this legislation. There were two parts:  The idea of human equality, that all men were created by God with equal rights and the idea that there were universal moral laws, i.e., the  “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and that government was subject to those laws and should be limited in its reach. It was these beliefs that allowed Congress to dispense a national asset while forgoing the opportunity to expand federal power.

For our first 100 years, legislators understood themselves to bound and limited by the laws of God.  It is precisely this understanding that is missing among our political leadership today and in fact this concept is anathema to them.  For example, when Clarence Thomas was undergoing grilling by the Senate Judiciary Committee during his confirmation hearings, the most intense questioning was about the idea of natural law.  This was a dangerous idea to the senators.  They did not wish to have a Supreme Court Judge who viewed himself under the authority of God.  It would hinder their political ambitions.

Today’s senators and congressmen have been educated with the idea that government is the ultimate authority and that they can and should use it as a means to change society to conform to their idea of what it should be, regardless of what the Constitution says.  Hence we get the current health care legislation that Democrats seemed determined to force on us, “for our own good”, despite the opposition of an overwhelming majority of Americans. The Democrats have forgotten the lessons of history: that once government takes the view that the king is law it quickly becomes a despot.

We have beeen educated out of the immutable truths of God and the fallout is destroying the republic. Courts and politicians have abandoned the concept of adhering to original intent and embraced the “living Constitution” so that it can be manipulated at the whim of those in power. This is why Obama refers to the thought of absolute truth being tyrannical.  Absolute truth is an impediment to  “change” and to those who have determined that their version of change is what is good.   Once the idea of absolute truth is abandoned, the definition of “good” becomes subjective and the only standard of behavior is what politicians want, and they justify bullying the rest of us to get what they want.