Posted on 12/20/2018 1:15:21 AM PST by Jacquerie
Can liberty be preserved across a continent? In 1787, the historical record said “no.” The Roman and contemporary Russia, China, and Ottoman Empires were glaring examples. Not everyone was buying the Federalists’ argument that the federal structure of the Constitution, in which smaller republics were represented in the umbrella republic, would keep the new government in check.
As pundits and patriots today wonder if resolution of the centrifugal forces that threaten the American Union is possible, perhaps we can find solace in the words of James Madison.
From the 14th Federalist:
I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, . . . that you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appearance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scene into which the advocates for disunion would conduct you.
Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire.
Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish.
No, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness.
But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?
To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness.
Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind.
Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.
If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the Union, this was the work most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new modelled by the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide.
Publius
The media and self-serving politicians (but I repeat myself) keep pounding away at the dead horse named "Bipartisan Consensus", totally obscuring the intent of the Constitution's architects, which was continual conflict. It has been said that any time two people are in total agreement, one of them is doing all of the thinking for the pair. The U.S. Constitution, by dividing power among three branches and establishing both direct election of representatives and the offset election of senators by state legislatures, established a system by which no one individual group of people in the country could gain control. They also gave us the blessing of a republic, not a mobocracy/democracy, to prevent legislation from being whipsawed back and forth in a frenzied effort to satisfy the current circus in town. This collection of conflicting bodies and interests serves us by providing a continuous balance between chaos (which is not good for small children and pregnant women) and statism (which is not good for anyone).
I believe it was Jefferson who noted that a republic can be maintained only by a properly educated moral people. And, THAT, boys and girls, is why public education is being used to dumb down and indoctrinate the children of this country. Destroy the next generation's ability to identify the threats to their freedom, while simultaneously substituting "social justice" for true morality, and you are halfway there.
Liberty lasted longer than a socialist state would have lasted.
Our prosperity became part of our undoing, leading people to take our economic strength for granted.
But, the end of liberty started on the day liberty was born....by the statists, socialists or whatever you want to call them.....men who crave power & money.
The Soviets took power on the back of the working class...taking everything away from everyone (except party loyalists) and enslaving those deemed compliant enough to survive.
The NAZIs took power on the back of German pride (nationalism) as the root. They built a war machine and gave the people purpose. The power and wealth (stolen) was consolidated among the loyal leadership.
The islamists take power on the back of religion.....socialism by theocracy...and consolidate all wealth and power among a few.
This is a repeated pattern throughout history....use a motivation to consolidate the people, take power, destroy opponents and accumulate wealth and control for as long as you can hold it.
The global socialists are now attempting this on a grand scale. The League of Nations was their first, failed attempt. The UN has stuck around longer, but has no teeth.
Today, they are trying to use culture wars, man-made climate change and other lies to consolidate the people and take power. The global socialists are working with the islamists to create regional socialist states. They can fight it out for global domination once no opposition remains.
“....the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union...”
In Madison’s time. Yes. Now. No.
The oldest bloodlines are yet the bastion of our liberties...all descendants of Northern European religious dissenters centered around the middle English Puritans, Scots Conventioneers, Scots Ulster-men, Huguenots, German and Dutch Palatines/Baptists, etc. Their leadership provided by Virginia cavaliers steeped in traditions of ancient Greece, Rome, Anglo-Saxon common law.
The newbies are less so with each wave of immigration. The Irish Catholics, the Italians, East Europeans, the Asians east and west, and now the 3rd world peasant classes from Somalia and Latin America.
Hardly the stock of republican independence and virtue.
Just look at the demographics of the two parties.
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