“The growth of government has politicized life and weakened the nation’s moral fabric. Government intervention— in the economy, in the community, and in society—has increased the payoff from political action and reduced the scope of private action. People have become more dependent on the state and have sacrificed freedom for a false sense of security.” These are the sobering words of James A. Dorn, Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Cato Institute. Coincidently, Dorn made his allegations during an August 18, 1995 lecture, seventeen miles northwest of Jamestown, home to the vestiges of the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Dorn went on to suggest, “One cannot blame government for all of society’s ills, but there is no doubt that economic and social legislation over the past 50 years has had a negative impact on virtue [behavior showing high moral standards]. The internal moral compass that normally guides individual behavior will no longer function when the state undermines incentives for moral conduct and blurs the distinction between right and wrong.”
Tackling this issue of “right and wrong,” founder and director of the International Society for Individual Liberty, Jarret B. Wollstein, noted in his 1969 publication, Society Without Coercion, “Despite the lofty pretensions of most governments, the fact remains that they, like any other group of men, are nothing more than a collection of individuals. There is nothing a government can morally do, which individuals by themselves cannot morally do. The group is ethically no different from the individual.”
As we have all witnessed, “Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom.” So asserted a fiery Patrick Henry at one of his spirited speeches during the founding of this country.
Another one of those early Founding Fathers, Noah Webster, considered the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” vehemently warned, “When the will of man is raised above law it is always tyranny and despotism, whether it is the will of a bashaw [a man of high rank or office] or of bastard patriots.”
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines the most important demand of the Rule of Law: “that people in positions of authority should exercise their power within a constraining framework of well-established public norms rather than in an arbitrary, ad hoc, or purely discretionary manner on the basis of their own preferences or ideology. It insists that the government should operate within a framework of law in everything it does, and that it should be accountable through law when there is a suggestion of unauthorized action by those in power.”
I found myself defending this fundamental principle of the Rule of Law a number of times as an elected commissioner on behalf of citizens.
Samuel Adam’s prophetic words are brought into sharp focus: “A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.” Adam’s advised, “If we would enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”
A year after our country’s national centennial, a long-time member of the House of Representatives and future president of the United States, James A. Garfield, reflected on the development of the American legislature in an April 1877 issue of The Atlantic, “Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature…. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation … it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.
“The most alarming feature of our situation is the fact that so many citizens of high character and solid judgment pay but little attention to the sources of political power, to the selection of those who shall make their laws.”
Thomas Jefferson, venerated for writing the Declaration of Independence, held to the belief, “Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights.
“The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.”
Jefferson challenged, ”It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self-government if we will but think so.”
Hear the counsel of others
“We do not need more intellectual power, we need more moral power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character. We do not need more government, we need more culture. We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen. If the foundation be firm, the foundation will stand.” – Calvin Coolidge
“The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated.” – Ronald Reagan
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington
I’ll wrap this up with a penetrating reflection taken from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison, a classic reading born in a Nazi prison cell: ”We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence (sic) [pretense: attempt to make something that is not the case appear true]; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical. Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?” “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” – Abraham Lincoln
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics. At times the column is editorial in nature.
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