Posted on 10/17/2010 2:46:47 PM PDT by citizenredstater9271
In The Federalist No. 51, arguably the most important one of all, James Madison wrote in defense of a proposed national constitution that would establish a structure of "checks and balances between the different departments" of the government and, as a result, constrain the government's oppression of the public. In making his argument, Madison penned the following paragraph, which comes close to being a short course in political science:
The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government 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; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.[1]
The passage that refers to the angels is a rhetorical masterpiece, so memorable that it has become almost a cliché.
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
And what prevents another private person from coming along, offering your children candy, and taking possession of their person? No government control mind you, everybody free as a bird. It would come down to a fist fight or worse in most cases, so the unencumbered free association you envision is a horrific fallacy. The law is there to enable the police power to protect the legitimate interests of the biological family. It promotes peace and well-being in the society, and a nurturing environment with long-term continuity for those who will grow to become contributors in their day of maturity. That’s all good, and justifies the state’s interest in protecting and encouraging heterosexual marriage.
Says who? You? Name your authority!
So what your saying is the biological family didn't exist until the government did. How true is this? Are there biological families in place with no government like Somalia?
See, this is why John Knox’s ideas on church governance is such an important person to the best ideas on how to form a civil government. One person can have a really dumb idea, like you for instance. Also, one person has no authority to rule us, King George II, for instance. But by communing with each other and voting for our leaders, we are able to form a union with a proper foundation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presbyterianism
The foundation is of course our understanding of what God thinks is best. These can be discovered through reading the Bible or the study of his creation. From this we get the concept of Natural Rights.
And just to slow the government down and prevent it from acting rashly, Montesquieu’s ideas on the Separation of Powers help.
Welcome to our constitution.
Exactly correct. With no government, families still exist. God creates them. Pioneers, with no government, had families. Pioneers needed a bit of government to keep evil people from hurting God’s creation. Our government merely recognizes the existence of God’s natural order.
The assertion that there is no such thing as a family is very nearly the same as saying there is no such thing as God.
Well, we’re getting nowhere. I work in the law, and I get to see what happens to some of these kids. You can say there is no interest, but I would never want to trade our system, imperfect as it is, for the present Somali nightmare. It is well known that times of severe political instability have a devastating impact on families, not just physically, but psychologically and emotionally as well. If you want to destroy a culture, that’s the way to go.
Furthermore, even when there is a breakdown of higher level of governance, lower nodes of governance tend to form naturally, and in no society of which I am aware is your bizarre hypothesis true, that the church is the sole means of performing marriage. That is a later tradition that was not even true when the Scriptures were written, but then as now, when the community at large recognized a union as the formation of a new, permanent, and biologically rational pairing, that’s when a marriage occurred. And the state is just the community writ large.
BTW, you have not answered my question. I repeat, by what authority do you claim the church has exclusive control over marriage?
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I don't. Modern day Libertarians have hijacked the word "liberty" and tainted it, trying to convince others that the Founding Fathers definition of liberty was the same as theirs.
Our founding fathers were guided, in part, by the ideas of church governance from the Scottish Reformation, by John Locke’s ideas on Natural Rights and Montesquieu’s ideas of the separation of powers. This is pretty basic stuff.
I'm a student of Wallbuilders.com and other various historians of the Founding Fathers.
Link to Wallbuilders.com
Join me in the fight to expose modern day Libertarianism for the fraudulent (and destructive) movement that it is.
When someone doesn't have the knowledge to deal with the basics when it comes to the laws of God; what makes you think we should trust him with economics?
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