Posted by
Gary Winebarger on Friday, June 12, 2009 2:19:29 PM
Our universe is filled with extraordinary events, most of which our kind will never witness first-hand. Things like black holes and supernovas excite our curiosity as we can hardly imagine the majesty, complexity and significance of such events. They have come to existence across a 10-15 billion year history. There are galaxies, solar systems and planets; there is Earth. There have been super-volcanoes and meteor strikes. There have been dinosaurs and cavemen.
Man evolved into groups, tribes, cultures, civilizations and societies. Hundreds of these factions blanket Earth being governed in some form or fashion. There are monarchs, dictators, and elections. There are revolutions, coups, power grabs, murders, money and power. Some of the oldest governed societies date back 4,000 or more years. In that time, a relative blink of the eye, how long do governments stand? Should we ask the Russians, French, Germans or one of the myriad of African and Middle Eastern nations?
How about Native Americans, the Mayan or Aztecs? Let’s ask John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. They wrote 85 essays in an attempt to convince the people to ratify a Constitution of expressly limited federal power. The people were scared. They had escaped tyranny from the Crown and were learned of struggles long past. They felt secure in there liberty and wanted nothing to have of it being compromised. After due deliberation, the Constitution was ratified in 1788.
Within 72 years the US had a civil war. Ending in 1865, it served in reuniting from differences on states rights, namely tariffs and slavery. The US then emerged from the industrial age with the progressivism of Theodore Roosevelt soon followed with FDRs New Deals of 1933 and 1935; 70 years after the end of the US Civil War. Still again there has been Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. There have been liberal constitutional interpretations regarding interstate commerce of a farmer’s small wheat crop. Our federal government has become a collage of departments, agencies, committees, commissions, services, lobbyists and czars. There have been corruption, greed, cronyism and waste. And in 73 years since the New Deal, the US elected Barack Hussein Obama as president. What will our society be like in another 70 years?
Our piece in the history of civilized governance has been but a blink in time; but in that time we have not only accepted the federal government’s expanding power but one must now pry it from our cold, dead fingers as we cling to it as if a child’s teddy-bear.