From a Nation of Laws to a Nation of Law-breakers

By A.R. Nash · Friday, January 20, 2012

The noted French political philosopher, De Montesquieu (1689-1755) said: "The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." Something similar could be said about a nation's people.

The earliest settlers of the British colonies in America left England with the determination that they would build a new existence, a new society in which they were free to embrace and obey the laws of God and Christ as their consciences constrained them to do. They could be described as strict adherents to the rules, whether social, moral, or spiritual. But over the decades and centuries, such strict religious societies were replaced by average people just trying to get by as best they could.

They might be exemplified by the men who illegally invaded the British commercial ships that had brought in a large cargo of tea, and criminally threw that tea into the harbor. The American authorities were aghast at such crude, brutish behavior and sought to mend fences with the British because they believed in the rule of law. But the injustices of the King and British Parliament were so egregious that a revolt was brewing in the hearts of the Americans and within a couple of years it had boiled over. The rule of law, -British law ruling over all of the inhabitants of all of the colonies, was openly condemned, and rejected. So America had evolved from a land founded by strict divine-law supporters to resolute royal-law violators.

Ever since then we've been a people of two minds; one would die to defend the rule of law, while the other turns its back on the laws of men because they are disagreeable laws. It took a long, bloody war and half a million deaths before anti-slavery law, -most disagreeable, was finally made the law of the land. Until then half the nation preferred to disobey the basic moral laws and principles written in stone in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution of Government. Clearly, it's human nature to be self-righteous and self-serving rather than selfless and altruistic. That fact is what will determine our future.

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams

As the influence of religious morality has waned, the willingness of individuals to ignore the law has grown in proportion. We didn't like Prohibition so it was widely violated, as it deserved to be because it was a violation of a basic human freedom.* Same with the unconcentrated natural substances that the guardians of society decided to criminalize, (-marijuana, peyote, coca leaves). Same with gambling. Same with prostitution. And let's not forget our willingness to violate speeding laws and income tax laws.

When personal liberty clashes with morality or society's fears and concerns, liberty loses. Perhaps that's for the best when so many in the population have no self-control. But it reinforces the impression that government, -like individuals, can do pretty much whatever it chooses even if it violates fundamental principles of self-ownership and personal liberty and responsibility.

*[the reason to respect Prohibition was that it was not passed by a simple majority of Congress, -rather it was widely agreed to by the American people and passed as a Constitutional Amendment].

A great many people are lovers of their occasional vices regardless of the law and the detrimental consequences, such as those of the drug trade. We smile when someone gets away with something rougish like out-running a police car. Smokey & the Bandit and Dukes of Hazard portrayed the lawmen as uptight buffons while those who broke the law were the cool ones. It's one thing when the lawbreakers are just popular characters in popular fiction, but when they are the architects and administrators of some of the largest companies in American history, -then it's not so cute because the damage they caused (through the actions they took which they knew were totally unethical) almost destroyed the entire world financial system. But legally "stealing" hundreds of dollars is no less unethical in principle than "stealing" hundreds of billions of dollars. They are the same qualitatively, just different quantitatively. The corruption of financial processes, whether they be in the corporate realm or the government realm, and the apathy that attends that corruption, does far more damage than any individual crook could ever do.

The lack of a moral code and a personal moral center is seen all throughout society, from sports hero cheating on their wives, using drugs, running dog fights, to priests molesting children and it not being reported by their superiors, to doctors engaging in massive Medicare fraud, to lawyers....-just fill in the blank, to climate scientists engaging in fraudulent practices. Dishonest violations of the rules are almost common. But those examples are all in the private sector and often out of sight of the public. What erodes public obedience to the rules and respect for the rule makers is when they are the biggest violators of all.

How many Congressmen wish for and work for the diminishment of their own power? Not many, instead they engage in a career long pattern of usurping an evermore greater share of authority that belongs to the States and the People, -all the while knowing that the bastardized basic presumption of all Congresses is that their power exceeds the authority of the Constitution because they are alive and living today and not just "some dead piece of paper". They don't just tilt toward that attitude, they live in it because there has developed an illicit tradition of giving an unlimited meaning to the Taxation and General Welfare powers of Congress, which is in direct violation of what our founders intended and expected.

"If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Daniel Webster

The degree to which the Sociocratic party is willing to go to in order to further their unconstitutional agenda is exemplified by the "Affordable Health Care Act", which contains provisions that have put a gun to the head of fundamental liberty, and in 2014 it will pull the trigger. They have disguised a great evil by nestling it in a great good. The end purpose is both good and evil, -good for many, evil for many more. The takers vs the makers. Which side will win? The takers have already won, and only a sweep of both houses of Congress and the White House can undo it. Or it may be undone by a single vote of the gods of the Supreme Court, thereby carrying more authority than all of the rest of our government and the will of the people combined. Can any sane person believe that there are no fundamental short-comings in such a system?

That, of course, begs the question; "What's the alternative?" The alternative is one that is not available to us because it is based on a people, and their representatives, that follow the rules. And the rules do not include huge abrogations of personal freedom and States Rights which our national government is so willing to engage in.

Even if their aim is to do good, (while benefiting themselves and advancing their utopian fantasy), they go about it by breaking the rules, ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the principles embodied in them. And this goes on generation after generation, -to the point that it is the status quo and Standard Operating Procedure. Is there any possibility of returning to respect for fundamental law and fundamental liberty? Not much, -not when nearly half of the population is dependent on government.

Congress is in no position to criticize the President for usurping its authority when it does the same and more to the States and the People, so there will be no national discussion about our national willingness to break the rules as we see fit because so many of those who could lead such a discussion are guilty of being part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The voices that might "cry in the wilderness" will be ignored unless they are a front-runner in a presidential election. Others with clear and alarming warnings shared in book form will be ignored by the main-stream media because they espouse a return to the rule of law and the defense of individual liberty and responsibility. You can't build and support a vast federal welfare state if you sound alarms signaling that it will destroy the future. And the future is one huge invisible party that will have to live with all of the self-centered, self-serving policies of today that are steering the ship of state toward certain wreckage on the shoals of a crushing, unfathomable level of national, state, municipal, corporate and student debt. We are the frog in the slow-to-boil pot and we are too relaxed and unafraid to realized what is coming if we don't act and act soon.

http://obama--nation.com http://photobucket.com/obama_bc A.R. Nash Jan. 2012

Third-party content does not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Patriot Post.