[NYer]

Christopher Manion served as a staff director on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for many years. He has taught in the departments of politics, religion, and international relations at Boston University, the Catholic University of America, and Christendom College, and is the director of the Campaign for Humanae Vitae™, a project of the Bellarmine Forum Foundation. He is a Knight of Malta.

[NYer]

Catholic ping!

[nickcarraway]

Great post.

[ClearCase_guy]

We live in dark times.

[newheart]

Without the moral and metaphysical limits of legitimate authority, the cancer of illegitimate power festers and grows, attacking and oppressing any resistance, both within government and without.

Excellent post, NYer.

Jesus said to "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God, that which is God's." This is often misunderstood (along with other "proof-texts") to say that we ought to submit to governmental authority in all cases. That simply is not true. What Jesus was doing is telling us that there are limits. There is a purpose for Caesar (government) in maintaining a certain level of order in a fallen world. But the moment that Caesar begins to usurp God's role he has reached what Manion rightly calls the "moral and metaphysical limits of legitimate authority."

Our founders understood that but it has been downhill ever since. Long ago our government reached the tipping point where the survival of its own power surpassed its commitment to the founding principles.

[Jacquerie]

Good post, and I thought the author would get to THE reason our once federal government has unlimited power.

Congress has usurped from the states and the people powers that the Framers never dreamed of.

Well duh, with the 17th Amendment we ceased being a federal republic and overnight morphed into a democratic republic. The 17th made our popular slide into tyranny as certain as tomorrow's sunrise.