-— Only the American Constitution has limited the coercive hand of government. Once its limits are disregarded or erased, the consequences of tyranny will be loosed. -—
Beautiful.
The urgency for passing on to rising generations the ideas essential to liberty was clear and constituted the primary imperative for education in America.
Since the late 1800's, those who self-identified first as "liberals," and now as "progressives," gained control of the mechanisms of education in America as a primary tool in dimming the understanding of "the People" of their (the citizens') role as "Keepers" (Justice Story) of that Constitution.
The restoration of liberty may well depend on "the People" rediscovering the ideas.
The following excerpt comes from the concluding paragraphs of an essay in a 1987 volume entitled Our Ageless Constitution:
It was John Adams who said: "The foundation of every government is some principle or passion in the minds of the people." Clearly, the Founders' passion was liberty, and in order to secure that liberty, they sought out and incorÂporated into the United States Constitution those ideas and principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence.
The French historian, Guizot, once asked James Russell Lowell, "How long will the American republic endure?" Lowell replied: "As long as the IDEAS of the men who founded it continue dominant" Herein lies the answer to the question, "Will the Experiment Succeed?"
It can and will succeed IF the motivating "principle or passion in the minds of the people" is LIBERTY, and if that passion causes them to exert the determination and will to complete the needed restoration of the IDEAS upon which the great American experiment was based.