Land of our Forefathers?

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. " John Adams

It is true true that no democracy has lasted forever. But neither has any monarchy, empire or dictatorship for that matter. So why make the statement?

Statements we make come from our opinions and our opinions are shaped by our individual experiences. The differences between generations of humans can be attributed to our lack of shared experiences. My generation lacks experience of an economic downturn, and thus have difficulty understanding why things are more difficult now than in any time in their lifetime. Who can blame them, having been less than 10 years old through the 80's and only beginning to pay attention to things during the roaring 90's?

THE SET UP

Our Founders created a system of governance born from their shared experiences of tyrannical government. They had daily experience with a government that was neither of the people, by the people or for the people.

Today the average American has no life context to understand that mindset, no contact with tyrannical government, no experience of government oppression of their rights. Most of our difficulties revolve around not being able to find work, expensive health care bills, and the endless pursuit of trying to divorce consequences from our actions. Is it any wonder that we continually vote to give the government more power over our lives? It isn't madness that plagues us, but a basic failure to understand the context of our founding.

Once we understand that our experiences shape our opinions we can begin to understand why Adams would state that democracy will lead to its own destruction. A people who have grown so fond of success will panic when that success is threatened. They vote for the candidate who promises the most, not for the candidate who promises tough love.

For the average American voter, who is more attractive: the candidate who promises to raise taxes only on the richest 3% to pay for health care for the other 97%, or the candidate who says they are against such programs? Can anyone honestly speculate that our Founders, the same men who originally forbid the Federal government from printing money, would want them to have control over our health care? If our system of government was designed to prevent that type of government control, why do so many today favor it?

The lack of understanding the historical context of our founding leads to further difficulty. Our rights are no longer understood to mean what they were created as.

Our Founders were afraid of government tyranny over speech, so they prohibited it from interfering with our right to express what we want. Today our right to free speech is understood to mean that we are free to print pornography, free to say hateful things and free to stand on the corner and shout at everyone whatever we want.

Our Founders were afraid of the government forcibly employing their will on the people, so they wrote in our right to bear and keep arms. Today we are told that in order to protect us the government needs to remove that right from everyone, not just the dangerous.

THE TRANSITION

We are products of our own success, and our success has become a detriment to our freedom. As Adams predicted we are slowly voting away what our Founders put in place. Our primary deficiency is that we no longer share the experiences of our Founders. Because we as a nation no longer have the capacity for this understanding, our politicians have run amok. Over time the Federal government's power has grown at the expense of the States' power and at the expense of our rights. We now have government programs that provide for our welfare, our medical care, our education, our infrastructure and our retirement. The Fed spends our money by the trillions of dollars against the will of the public. The government owns what were previously privately held enterprises such as banks, insurers, and car manufacturers. Recently our government fired the head of a publicly traded company.

Our judicial branch has abandoned its intended purpose of interpreting law and embraced legislating from the bench, a fact embraced by a president who wants judges to have empathy for those whose cases they are deciding.

Our legislative branch has willingly ceded power to the executive branch.

How far have we strayed? Thomas Jefferson once called Alexander Hamilton a traitor for proposing the creation of the First Bank of the United States. Hamilton thought that there should exist a bank to provide for the financial needs of the Federal government, and Jefferson thought that ceded too much authority to the Fed and was unconstitutional. Considering the recent actions of the Federal government with the stimulus package and TARP plans, was Jefferson so wrong in his opinion?

THE FUTURE

On our current path it will not be long until the United States exists in name only. Just as Rome survived its own change into an empire, the name "United States" will survive whatever political mutations occur in the future. For instance, with the government now having ownership of what used to be private and public ownership of industry we are presented with two options: socialism and fascism. A reversion back to smaller more local government is unlikely, as politicians rarely relinquish power. Considering the current mindset of Joe Voter, it seems even more unlikely that he would request his political leaders to relinquish that power any time soon.

In socialist governments, the government (the people) own the means of production and decide how it is run. With fascism those industries are held privately, but the government tells them what to do. We have current examples of both over the last year. Where we go from here, is any one's guess. One thing is for sure, however: where we end up will be light years away from where we began.