“”When people come to regard politics as a “career,” then we may be sure that government for the people, at their consent, is being supplanted by a tyranny managed by a “ruling class.””
The ruling class in this system was able to control because of a pluralistic system with no set rules about morality.
We are close to the point where “WE THE PEOPLE” mentality approve of abortion,gay marriage and every other moral atrocity.
You ought to realize that a country based on “We the people” was flawed from the start, because there was never any set rules DEFINING morality laid as a foundation in the first place.
It has only took a few hundred years to make “We The People” immoral majorities willing to accept all evil
There was foundation laid in the first place. It is to be found in a document containing (among others) these words:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ~ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, ~ That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Doubtless, you recognize the above to come from our Declaration of Independence. The men who put their names to that document and to the constitution that followed (and many another who joined them in agreement) did subscribe to a morality which they have defended for over 400 years.
Those men (and women) did themselves declare Judeo-Christian values to be the foundation of the Revolutionary Act, and of the document they created and have ever since defended.
A few remarks in support from a few of them for the record:
“The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.”
. . . . . John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, 20 June, 1815, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh Editor, in 19 volumes.
“But where says some is the king of America? I'll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”
. . . . . Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776.
“. . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
. . . . . George Washington, Farewell Address, 17 September, 1796, para 27 (see the complete paragraph for a more thorough exposition of this thought).
“I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth - that God governs in the affairs of men. If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
. . . . . Benjamin Franklin, 1787, when he was 81, from a speech given at the Constitutional Convention.
I told you before. I tell you again: “And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity (emphasis mine), in which all those sects were united; and the general principles of English and American liberty, in which all these young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her independence.”
. . . . . John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson, dated June 28, 1813, Ibid.
Even those of a later time understood that it is the Judeo-Christian Tradition which is the foundation and wellspring of our liberty:
“A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”
. . . . . Calvin Coolidge, “The Inspiration of the Declaration,” Speech at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 5, 1926.
“Oh, we are weary pilgrims; to this wilderness we bring
A Church without a bishop, a State without a King.”
. . . . . anonymous poem, The Puritans’ Mistake, published by Oliver Ditson in 1844
I understand that there are a certain number of people who have declared the whole “American Experiment” to be simply a “Protestant Botch” (see Is America Just a Protestant Botch?, this forum).
Rather than standing off at a distance and peppering this thread with criticisms, perhaps you can advance and defend an alternative?
Hmmm, what framework of government other than a republic was appropriate for us?