[higgmeister]

People like us, you and me, raised in the understanding that we are free, that we have inalienable rights, and that the institutions of this country have our best interests at heart, will tend to tie ourselves in knots rather than contemplate the idea those authorities might actually be working against us now. I took that thought of benevolent, well-meaning authority for granted for most of my life, God help me. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was as gullible as the next chump.

Somebody told US something over forty years ago:

President Ronald Reagan- Government is the problem.

[Qiviut]

Obviously, we didn’t listen.

[noiseman]

Somebody told US something over forty years ago:

President Ronald Reagan- Government is the problem.

It’s pretty simple: People are inherently sinful and self-centered. Giving them power over others is therefore dangerous, but necessary to the orderly functioning of a country. The only solution therefore is to strictly limit the power of those in government and install numerous safeguards by balancing the power (cravenness) of one branch against another. How brilliant was it for our founders to have realized this and tempered it as much as possible by directing the self-interest of one group against that of another?

That system works so long as most, if not all of those in government are believers in God, self-restrained as much as possible through their adherence to God’s moral code. The other structural restraints are still needed, though, as even the best believer is still in a sinful state. But once the general quality of the people declines to such a point that most of those in government are nothing more than unbelieving, hedonistic pagans, there is no longer any system that can restrain their evil. And it’s even worse with today’s “progressives” who are not only personally corrupt, but who see themselves as on a common mission to corrupt everything good and decent about America. Because of that common evil purpose, trying to pit them against each other doesn’t work. They just collude on every level to realize their horrific vision.

[SaxxonWoods]

Yes, and add this about Reagan and Sharansky:

“Sharansky was in prison when he heard that President Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire.” The year was 1983. Reagan had uttered the famous — and controversial — words in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals. “It was one of the most important, freedom-affirming declarations, and we all instantly knew it,” Sharansky said in a 2004 interview. “For us, that was the moment that really marked the end for them, and the beginning for us. The lie had been exposed and could never, ever be untold now. This was the end of Lenin’s ‘Great October Bolshevik Revolution’ and the beginning of a new revolution, a freedom revolution — Reagan’s Revolution.”