Patrick Henry Was Right

www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article.php?ArticleID=176

Good article.

I agree with the article, and only want to note the exception I take: I have deeply held to the founders beliefs as long as I can remember, something taught me right in the earliest years and my voracious reading in my elementary days formed the fullest thoughts, States Rights, and the Constitution and original Bill of Rights and LIMITED GOVERNMENT at most were right. I see the actual views of “The People” around me and know that they ARE apathetic and even apologetic of our heritage.

I have not voted my conscience in my adult years, and still have never really, since I voted Peroutka lastly, there is not actually a party or candidate who would do what I believe is right, scrap it all, and begin again as our framers did and not make the same mistakes (just as long as they make “different mistakes” they will make mistakes, nothing is “perfect”.) I liked Peroutka alright, I do not have a love of the constitution as being the thing that holds this body of people together, or that going to a cleaned up government would work, going “back to the constitution”. I firmly DO believe that it should be scrapped and something different done. It’s unlikely to occur on purpose (men doing it on purpose) — more likely to come about because of distaster neccesity, whether it be a nature disaster or a war with man disaster or a combination. (I have an ally in the Peroutka-like folk though, we have many of the same ideas, just different solutions, though some are the same.)

I decend physically from the founding peoples of this country. I hold that in my heart and know that it’s important to never forget. Remember the colonial days … never forget.

I know that we are so far past the mark that we were when the colonists became rebel to the crown. One can see many other governments and how the people supported the rise of empire, and the masses NEVER LEARN! Oh how sad it is.

People’s that came to this country in the mid-1800’s through the mid-1900’s may not grasp what America really is.

It’s said the American Dream is: To Own Ones Own Home.

Maybe it is, but that’s not my dream. My dream is to live in a free society, with limited government influence. People ruling as need be, not for power, but only for a freedom and never forgetting what was and what can be if things get lax again and power takes over again.

www.chalcedon.edu/articles/article.php?ArticleID=176

Patrick Henry Was Right

What does liberty mean in the 21st century? Can it be maintained? “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”— do these words have any relevance for a society that has largely forgotten its historical roots?

Consider the plight of the American people. We have become apathetic, even apologetic, of our heritage. We have forgotten that the original intent of the Constitution was to place limits on the government’s ability to intrude into people’s lives. We have bought the devil’s lie that humans can build a utopian heaven on earth through what Bush the Elder called a New World Order.

Perhaps more than any other Founding Father, it was Patrick Henry who tried to warn his compatriots that adopting the U.S. Constitution would eventually lead to a consolidated empire instead of a federated republic, which they had under the Articles of Confederation. If our Founders had foreseen that the Constitution would be used to overthrow liberty and establish despotism, they probably would never have ratified it. The Anti-Federalists, like Patrick Henry, were distrustful of a central government that was built at the price of liberty. That’s why they insisted on the Bill of Rights — to stay the hand of tyranny for as long as possible.

Henry said,

We are descended from a people whose government was founded on liberty … but now the American spirit assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation is about to convert this country into a powerful and mighty empire; if you make the citizens of this country agree to become the subjects of one great consolidated empire of America, your government will not have sufficient energy to keep them together; such a government is incompatible with the genius of republicanism.

Years later, Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, said,

The great vital question now is: shall the federal government be arrested in its progress and be brought back to original principles, or shall it be permitted to go on in its present tendencies and rapid strides until it reaches complete consolidation?

More recently James Hall, writing in Etherzone, noted:

The events of September 11, 2001 were tragic, but hardly provide justification to abandon our Constitution or deploy the military to every corner of the globe. The security of the United States is not enhanced by perpetual intervention and permanent war. The Presidency is meant to lead the country, not to transform the nation into an empire. …

President Bush has overseen an expansion of the federal government, that no Democratic administration could accomplish. His use of executive orders has only increased the scope and reach of central authority. Resonantly absent are any efforts to enact fundamental conservative policies, or to reverse past policies of liberal administrations. Appointments and procedures all reinforce and expand a dominant role of bureaucratic agencies over local jurisdictions. The defense of liberty has been forsaken and is the ultimate causality of the Bush legacy.

In the end, Patrick Henry and the Anti-Federalists were right: people are far too trusting of government. Henry realized what few of us are willing to admit any longer — that men are basically evil, intrinsically power-hungry, and inherently incapable of being anything but tyrants in their feeble attempts to play God.

–author: Dave Black, posted on Chalcedon.edu Sept. 29, 2005