Subservient Nation?
by Bill Keffer
Issue 130 - April 22, 2009

In American history and government classes across this country, many still teach our children that our Founders demonstrated genius both in articulating the inalienable rights belonging to each person in our Declaration of Independence, and then in preserving those rights in our Declaration. Their sole and emphatic purpose in imposing a system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government was to prevent any one branch from accumulating too much power; and in imposing a system of federalism between the national and state governments to prevent the national government from usurping authority rightfully belonging to the states or to the people. The genius, then, was not only proclaiming the natural rights of man, but also the unfortunate recognition of the natural tendency of man to seek and retain power.

Man’s natural desire for power does not always come from those with evil or corrupt motives. It can also arise in those who believe they are possessed of beneficent, even magnanimous intentions. There are two simple reasons, however, why our Founders were not fooled by the good intentions of their fellow man: today’s seemingly good intentions become tomorrow’s despotism; and the price of accepting the good intentions of government is paid for with a loss in liberty and self-reliance.

Our founders unequivocally understood these stark truths. Upon the passage of the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention, a citizen of Philadelphia passing by Independence Hall asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government had just been decided on. Franklin famously responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin clearly knew that the fundamental vulnerability of self-government is that one day its citizens might realize they can manipulate government for their own selfish desires, taxing revenue away from others for purposes that stray farther and farther beyond the boundaries of constitutional legitimacy.

Thomas Jefferson also profoundly observed that “the natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.” In other words, left to their own natural behavior, men will add to their power in and through government, which will necessarily erode the amount of freedom enjoyed by those living under that government. Stated yet another way, where diligence, vigilance, and perseverance must be exercised is in resisting the natural tendency of man and government to seek more power. It is as if we as citizens are driving the eighteen-wheeler of government that is perpetually out of alignment, constantly requiring us to put all of our weight against the steering wheel to keep our big rig from heading straight into the bar ditch, if not ultimately off the cliff.

And yet, just as pitiful and ironic as the addict who knows that the alcohol or drug he craves is the very same thing that is killing him, Americans continue to hand over their freedoms and relinquish their sense of independence and individual responsibility – those attributes that have uniquely defined what it is to be an “American” - to an increasingly intrusive and powerful government made up of individuals who are all too willing to become that very concentration of accumulated power that our founders feared and attempted to prevent with the Constitution they ratified.

While our leaders in government are certainly culpable in accepting this excessive power, if not embracing and even pursuing it, ultimately the most significant and destructive blame lies at the feet of the Americans who have permitted, even demanded that it happen. That we did so is not difficult to understand, when you consider the severe economic hardships of the Great Depression, even our current economic free fall, and the many other difficult chapters in our nation’s history. When it comes to our own survival or that of our family, we are generally not reluctant to throw the rule book out the window. Except, there once was a time when we would draw the line at taking the life of another man; or taking the property of another man; or even depriving another man of the respect we would hope to receive from others. In other words, our natural inclinations would have been checked by what we acknowledged as the rules of civilized society, beliefs which have been memorialized in our Declaration as inalienable rights from God.

And, so, we find ourselves as Americans in the twenty-first century and heirs to the genius of our Founders at yet another historic crossroad in our nation’s story. We watch our elected leaders taxing and spending incomprehensible amounts of the posterity intended for our generation and for generations to come, in order to bail out corporations that (we are told) are too big to fail; entire industries that represent too much American tradition to be allowed to collapse; a state whose budget shortfall alone is more than the gross national product of most countries; and Americans whose condition of unemployment, retirement, and health coverage propel them to unhesitatingly surrender their dignity in exchange for a willing – and indefinite – dependence on government for their welfare.

Our founders, who were willing to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor – and the patriots who, in fact, did give up their lives and fortunes, so that we could embark on this great experiment in self-government – would be heartbroken and dumbfounded at how easily we have abdicated our independence and sense of individual responsibility, and how subservient and deferential we have become to a government that was originally designed to be our servant, rather than our master. Is this really what they dreamed of and died for?

Bill Keffer served two terms in the Texas state legislature and is the director of “Grassroots Citizens of Dallas County”, whose website is www.grassrootsdallas.org.